Reciprocal links: are they great, crap or something in between?

Reciprocal links are discussed controversially among search engine marketers. Some think that reciprocal links are great, others think that they are a waste of time, another group thinks that reciprocal links work to some degree.

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Do paid links really affect your Google rankings?

Paid links: do they really affect your Google rankings?

Many websites on the Internet will link to your website if you pay them for the links. Is this a good method to increase the link popularity of your website or can you get in trouble if you use paid links?

What does Google think about paid links?

Google is very clear about paid links. They don't like them. Google even has an official form that enables webmasters to report paid links to Google:

"Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it.

Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."

A recent problem

A webmaster recently reported problems in Google's webmaster discussion forum:

"Today I found that my entire site has dropped out of site in search results. I have a site that received over 2,000 search visits per day and today that has stopped."

It turned out that the website has many affiliate links and other links to advertisers that looked like paid links to Google. Unfortunately, these links were not marked as paid links and Google penalized the website for having the paid links.

What does this mean for your website?

You should avoid paid links if you don't want to get in trouble with Google. If you do buy or sell links, make sure that the links contain the rel="nofollow" attribute. By using that attribute, you show that the paid link is for advertising purposes only and that you don't want to manipulate your website rankings with the link.

While Google doesn't like paid links at all, they also make clear that links are very important:

"Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating."

For that reason, you should try to get as many good links to your website as possible. The quality is more important than the quantity.

Links that point to your website are a very important factor that influences the position of your website in Google's search results. The links that point to your website should be from related websites and they should contain the keywords for which you want to get high rankings.

Do not manipulate the links to your website by buying links and do not join automated link systems to increase the number of links to your website. There are many ways to get good links (related websites, blogs, social bookmark sites, directories, etc.). IBP helps you to get them all

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Sacramento SEO: how to improve your existing backlinks

Pimp your links: how to improve your existing backlinks

Getting links to your website is one of the most important things that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google and other big search engines.

Unfortunately, it is also one of the most difficult tasks. Do you make the most of your existing links? It's often much easier to improve your existing backlinks then getting new links to your website.

Pimp your links

1. Correct links that point to your old domain names

If you changed your domain name in the past, chances are that some people still link to your old domain name.

Of course, the links to your old domain name should redirect to your new domain with a 301 redirect to make sure that the links aren't lost. Unfortunately, links through 301 redirects do not pass the full link power to your website.

For that reason, contact the webmasters who link to your old domain name and ask them to link to your new domain. This will increase the effect of the links on your website rankings.

2. Correct links to broken pages on your website

Check your website statistics and redirect all links that go to a non-existing (404) page on your website to an existing page on your site so that the visitors aren't lost.

As above, it's even better to contact the webmasters who links to the non-existing pages and ask them to change the links.

3. Try to improve the link texts

When you're contacting other webmasters to tell them that they link to your old domain name or to a broken link on your website, you can also suggest new link texts for your links.

If the links to your website include the words for which you want to get high rankings in the link text, your chances of getting ranked for these keywords increase.

4. Suggest other relevant websites

This might sound like a strange advice but it can help your rankings: when you contact a webmaster and ask for a link, you might also suggest other websites that are related to yours.

If the website that links to your website links to other websites that are related to your website topic, it's more likely that search engines will find your website relevant to that topic. Details about this co-citation effect can be found here.

5. Check the links on your own website

If you want to see certain pages of your website in Google's search results, these pages should also be linked from your own website pages. If a web page is hidden in the navigation of your website then it's less likely that this page will get a good position in Google's results.

Your website should have a clear and logical navigation that emphasizes the pages that you want to see in Google's search results.

High rankings on Google are the result of good inbound links and optimized web page content. Our popular website promotion tool IBP helps you to get both.

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