You’re probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a link! Well, in a word – plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. So, you’re probably wondering, how do I make my link popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related,
quality sites. It’s a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the
most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this
step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don’t be discouraged; there are
tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites
will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when
pertaining to websites that are nothing more than “link farms” – pages containing line after line of indiscriminate
links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so
steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let’s get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on
all the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site
listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common
sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny
State, do NOT submit your listing to “Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State.” BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper – and submit your listing to the “Fine Alpaca Wool” category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful
to your site’s visitors. Let’s look at the Alpaca Wool site example. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies
would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website’s traffic, you are increasing both of your site’s business prospects – and both of your sites’ link popularity.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to do some research when you are looking for possible linking partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your own site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with the crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link
on your own links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact the webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk
mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that
you have actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them to check out the link for themselves. It’s a good idea to mention that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so you don’t sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and
non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be sure to check these website frequently to see if
they have added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then
give it another month, and if your site is still absent from their links page, it’s time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no way around the labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance.

By the way – make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you.
Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom!

Basically there are two types. Manual surfing and Auto surfing. Some Traffic exchanges cater for Manual surfing only, some cater for Auto surfing only and some cater for both.

Manual surfing – This requires your input by clicking a button after a specified time period, generally 15, 20 or 30 seconds, although there are a few other variations. With manual surfing, the surfer is expected to view each site. However, with most exchange sites, it is possible to
minimize or resize the windows. This defeats the purpose because it allows multiple sessions to be run simultaneously. On the better exchange sites, security measures are often used to deter this. These are normally random prompts that require user input. For example, after x number of page views, you may be required to enter a code, select a color or image or perform some other variation of this.

Auto surfing – This requires no input. However in reality, your input may be required because of popup or frame breakers. Some traffic exchange sites require that the pages run are maximized and although you can minimize the page yourself, it will automatically maximize at the next refresh. You will also find that with some exchange sites, pages will run on top whereas with others, pages will run quite happily underneath, allowing you to do what ever you like without ever viewing the page content.

Both manual and auto surfing will bring traffic to your website, but there is a much greater likelihood of your web pages being actually seen with manual surfing.

Credits – As well as surfing, credits are usually acquired for subscribing, for referrals and for any winnings associated with exchange site lotteries, games or competitions. These credits can then be used to increase the traffic to your site. Some exchange sites will also allow you to sell your credits to other members.

Free or Paid – The majority of Traffic Exchanges offer a paid option. This option may give you a better surf ratio, bonus credits, money for referrals or other benefits. Before paying however, it is important that you test how targeted the traffic is that you receive. There’s no point in paying for extra traffic if it doesn’t generate any more income for you.

Click for Credits or Buy Credits – Is it worth buying credits? This can depend on a number of reasons. The two main ones are time and money.

Lets take an example

At the time of writing the cost of 2000 credits for free members of a well known Traffic Exchange Site was $40. This works out at $0.02 a click. For pro members the same $40 bought 2200 credits.

With the number of clicks limited to 250 per day and page views of 20 seconds this means that in theory it will take you 250 X 20 = 5000 sec or 83 minutes 20 seconds to view the 250 pages. However in practice you must allow extra time for clicking the next button, clicking the title of the page you will be viewing and any sites worth looking at.

Since I am a firm believer in practical results, I viewed the 250 pages. It took me 2 hours and 12 minutes to accomplish this. During that time, I accumulated 854 credits. To buy these credits would have cost $17.08 as a free member and approximately $15.53 as a pro member. Allowing for rounding up, this equates to almost 390 credits per hour or $7.80 per hour cash value.

Now ask yourself this. Would you work for $7.80 per hour?

I must emphasize that this is only one example and that other results will differ because of the random allocation of credits. It is shown here only as an example and to give you an idea of the cost implications for one particular traffic exchange site. The cost of credits may differ
dramatically for different exchange sites. If you buy or intend to buy credits from a traffic exchange site, you can apply what is shown in the example. There’s no need to click on a large number of websites to find out if your exchange site is giving you enough credits for your money. A sample of around 20 sites should give you enough information to produce a rough value-for-money guide.

If you enjoy this sort of thing or want a break from train spotting, you could expand on this. Increase your sample size, increase the number of samples, select a good representation of traffic exchanges and tabulate your results. Choose enough sites and you will be able to create your own league table. Theres a market for everything.

Whether you use traffic exchange sites or not in the quest for more visitors to your site, you should at the very least know what they are and what they do. But don’t totally dismiss them. They are part of an expanding market. I recommend that you try at least one traffic exchange site. You could read every book on the subject, but without active participation, you will not be qualified to comment on their worth or suitability. The time taken for a few mouse clicks is a small price to pay. If it works for you, you have learned. If it doesn’t work for you, you have learned.

About the Author

Bryan Quinn is the webmaster of several information sites. His first website ebook-site.com is an excellent resource for ebooks and ebook related products with a variety of free ebooks and reports in the members area.

Author: Bryan Quinn
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Information

Traffic exchanges provide a free traffic and advertising method where a person signs up as a member and sets up a webpage URL to advertise his/her program or product. The traffic exchange will then rotate the URL webpage to its members based upon the amount of surfing you do. In general, traffic exchanges provide a ratio of 0.6:1.0 for each page surfed by a free member. This means that for every page you surf, you get 0.6 page credit for surfing. A few of them provide a 1:1 ratio for free members. Depending on the amount you surf, they may also credit you with bonus credits (i.e., 500 bonus credits for surfing x number of pages). Page rotations are timed and the time varies from 10 seconds to 30 seconds, depending on the traffic exchange.

Most traffic exchanges also provide a paid upgraded membership (a small monthly fee) which will give you a higher credit ratio and other incentives when you surf.

There are two other advertising tools provided by most traffic exchanges which are beneficial to a website owner. These tools are a referral link to the traffic exchange site and a Safe List advertising option.

1. If you promote the Referral Link, and others join the Traffic Exchange through your referral link, you will receive page view credits when your referrals surf.

2. You can utilize traffic exchange Safe Lists to send your email ads to the Safe List members of that traffic exchange.

You should know that both manual and auto-surf traffic exchanges are available to work with:

Manual Traffic Exchanges — Manual traffic exchanges generally have a 15 to 30 second timer and you have to click on an icon or text area after the timer runs out to rotate to the next traffic exchange page for viewing. This is done to assure that the pages get viewed by the user. The manual traffic exchanges usually provide a better credit ratio per page than auto-surf traffic exchanges. Manual traffic exchange advertising will get a better click ratio on your ads compared to the auto-surf.

Auto-surf Traffic Exchanges — Auto-surf traffic exchanges usually have a 5 to 15 second timer and the page views rotate automatically at the end of the timer run out. The auto-surf traffic exchanges usually provide a 0.6:1 credit ratio for surfing. The advantage of the auto-surf rotation is that the user does not have to click once or twice for each page viewed and more page view credits are accumulated as the timer is shorter and allows more page views per minute.

You can cut down on your surfing time by using a free multi-tabbed browser (i.e., Mozilla, Firefox, Crazy Browser).

Traffic exchange advertising may not be considered as targeted advertising (i.e., email and ezine advertising or search engine clicks), but it provides free traffic which will improve your site ranking and promotes your program or product at the same time.

Advertising with traffic exchanges is really simple once you start thinking of traffic exchanges as TV ads. You only have the viewers attention for a few seconds, so your sales page must grab it and give them an action they can take. Some people say that traffic exchange advertising does not work, but traffic exchange advertising is only one aspect of promoting your site. A site owner should diversify site advertising into as many available avenues as possible and track the ads to see what is working best and adjust his marketing strategy accordingly.

Getting free traffic and free advertising through the traffic exchanges is certainly worth considering.

Conley Stallard is the creator and owner of C & C Internet Marketing which provides home business opportunities, information products, services and affiliate programs with free training and support, excellent commission programs, no risk or obligation. To visit this site, CLICK HERE

To download a free copy of his new ‘How To’ ebook on getting free web site traffic and free advertising: CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Author: Conley Stallard
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera News

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything.

Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business. If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency.

One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities. However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful.

Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%.

To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100). If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer.

However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site. You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low.

There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site.

Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible. Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.