SEO|The Full Insider SEO Details Exposed

Reciprocal linking is a topic that generates a lot of discussion: everyone wants to know how to get it to work for them. Much of this discussion involves link trading, or linking together their own websites, and whether its going to get you in trouble or not. They invariably fear that they will run into problems with search engines who may consider it cheating. Many of them have heard horror stories about Linking Farms which often get banned from Google along with every page associated with them. This fear is justified by the obvious disasters that link farms can ensue upon a web site. There are very few webmasters who are willing to take the risk and rightfully so.

Misunderstandings cloud the debate on reciprocal links on both sides. Reciprocal links deserve a fair hearing, because some are bad for a website, but most arent. In the beginning, almost all sites had plenty of reciprocal links (the tradition of the links page), and they worked exactly as intended. Links brought in additional traffic, and affiliate links let people make money. These links pages are less and less common now, but seem to be making a slight come back during this period in which SEO work has become a phenomena and a hobby for many web masters. The fact that SEO work is so common now will inherently lead to answers to questions which have been guarded for years. These answers will help people decide if the old fashioned links pages are worth having or not.

Most people see nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned link trading, but swapping links is only one aspect of reciprocal linking. These link swaps are allowed and, in many cases, considered beneficial. Link trades are great for web sites because they allow them to communicate a greater amount of information to their visitors. These link swaps are only beneficial, however, if they link to pages that are somehow relevant. Links to completely random pages that visitors will not find interesting are useless and could be considered fraudulent exchanges.

There are also automatic link exchanges on the good side of things, and link farms on the bad one. Link exchanges can be extremely beneficial, but before you allow yourself to get roped into this kind of situation, make sure that it pans out as a legitimate source of traffic. If you subscribe to a link exchange, the links should be hand made by you. They should not be kept in a gigantic database on the middle mans server. They should also be done upon request rather than automatically. You should be able to look through each link and view each page to insure quality.

Reciprocal links are popular because of the good things they give you: they act as ads for your site as well as increasing your search engine rankings. Some people, however, say that you shouldnt link to other websites as it decreases your own link popularity they dont realize that you need to give a little to get a little.

Third Party Link Sites.

These sites allow anyone to join, like a club but they dont usually work to your advantage. They say theyre going to make it easier to find sites that will exchange links with you, but in reality you often wont get the kind of link quality you were expecting. Its a bad idea to use one of these link agencies, as many of them lack basic linking knowledge and have no idea of the best link strategies.

There are some rules that you should follow when you agree to link to another site, and some rules that you should expect the other sites to follow. Many webmasters dont know how to trade links effectively you need to teach them. Theres a right way and a wrong way to manage links always remember that quality is more important than quantity. FFAs with hundreds or thousands of links are completely useless, and no search engine wants them in their index. Many have been banned from the search engines.

The abuse of linking going on today is proof of the ignorance that surrounds link trading just look at an FFA if you dont believe me. Trading links has been going on since the beginning of the web, but all it would take for it to lose its popularity is for the search engines to start paying less attention to it, as they will soon be forced to do.

Alexa is a very powerful tool, used to rank website traffic. The relationship between how Alexa rates your website and how popular your website is, however, isnt as obvious as it might seem. You need to consider your websites ranking, links, traffic, and many other factors. Many of these factors are hidden and known only to the most experienced Alexa users.

Do other websites link to yours? If you want Alexas attention then you should make sure that they do. Dont worry: usually, all you need to do is ask, as long as you offer a link to their site in return. Remember that your links need to be relevant to your site dont take links from an unrelated site, as they wont be counted. However, if the links are on sites that dont get much traffic, then Alexa will never hear about them.

The fact of the matter is that relevant links are helpful to your visitors. Search engines want to know if a site is worth going to. If it is, they are happy to index it in a higher spot. This is a general rule of thumb that you should keep in mind at all times when performing SEO operations. The difference between a site with a moderate search results and a site with high search results is that the site with the higher results is generally more user friendly. Alexa Ratings and other rating systems try to emulate how a visitor will see your site. Once theyve determined the worth of your site to a visitor they index it accordingly. This is why it is so important to have relevant links. If you are linking to sites that your users would find interesting, Alexa will enjoy it.

By targeting sites that are similar to yours, but not exactly the same, youll get relevant links that Alexa will like. The best sites to link to are with content that complements your own. For example, if your site is dedicated to rock and roll and you link to a guitar sales web site, youll probably get traffic flow back and forth. One way of ensuring relevant information is to link to yourself from other sites that you own: why try to hunt down other webmasters if you have 20 or 30 websites of your own you can use? Traffic flow is the biggest factor, however, as most of what Alexa does is traffic-based.

After comparing your site to the other ones it ranks, Alexa will assign your site a ranking number. The higher that the ranking number is, the better traffic you are receiving. Many search results utilize Alexa Rankings in indexing their results, therefore, if you have a high Alexa Rating not only are you already getting a good deal of traffic, you will begin to accumulate even more traffic. If youd like to see your Alexa rating, all you need to do is go to alexa.com and enter your domain name.

You can also view Alexa rating using the Alexa toolbar, which lets you see how much traffic the site youre currently visiting has. For example, you might be considering whether you should exchange links with a site. If the site youre considering has no traffic then a link exchange wont be worth your time and it may even have an adverse effect on your Google Pagerank which is at least as important as your Alexa Rating.

Using the Alexa ranking system allows you to compare the traffic of your site or other sites with the traffic of the web as a whole. Number 1 is the top rank, so the larger the ranking number, the lower the traffic is likely to be. Lets say that your sites rank at Alexa is something like 1,578,459. No matter how professional the website looks, or how high the Google PageRank is, your website just doesnt have much traffic in fact, Alexa knows of 1,578,458 websites that have more traffic than you do.

It is, however, important to keep in mind that a high Google PageRank will almost certainly increase your traffic. If you have a high Google PageRank and a low Alexa Rating, your site is probably new to the internet. It will take your visitors some time to find the site via Google and the links from other sites. Generally, the Alexa Rating is the second rating that SEO managers should worry about. The Alexa Rating is very useful in analyzing a comparison between your site and others, but you must also keep in mind that because Alexa ranks sites based on visits by users who utilize their toolbar, these ratings can be inflated or under-stated..