Friday, July , 30, 2010

Internet Marketing: Discover The Deadly Sins To Avoid When Getting Back Links

Getting back links is one of the most important Internet marketing strategy, because the search engines will factor in link popularity as one of the ranking criteria when it comes to the search results.

This technique sounds quite straight-forward, isn`t it? Just keep getting back links – any kind of back links – to your site, and hope for the best. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as it looks, because the search engines have red-flagged some of the linking strategies used by some Internet marketing professionals.

In this article, I will share with you some of the deadly sins that you must avoid when you are getting back links to your site, so as to prevent the search engines from waving the red flag at you.

1. Avoid hosting your links in a separate links page

It sounds like a good idea to host your links in a separate web page, but you are strongly advised not to do that. The reason is because links that are hosted in a links page tend to be less valuable than contextual relevant links found in the body of a content page. So it is better for you to have your back link in the content itself, hyperlinked with an anchor text containing your main keywords.

2. Avoid getting all your back links only from high-ranking pages

You may be a little surprised, but it is not advisable for you to get all your back links only from high-ranking pages, no matter how tempting it may be. Many Internet marketing professionals like to go all out to get back links from websites with PR 5 and above. But by doing so, the search engines will be thinking that all these links are being bought.

The solution to this problem is to get your back links from a variety of websites with different page ranks.

3. Avoid links that carry the same description.

The search engines do not like links that carry the same description. The solution is the same as above: variation is the key here. Make sure that when you leave your links, you should try to at least change the descriptions attached to them. In this way, you are effectively telling the search engines that it is the webmasters themselves who chose to display your links on their web pages.

4. The problems with reciprocal linking

Generally, reciprocal links are okay. But then if there is too much of the same, the search engines will penalize you, and you would have to prepare for a lower page rank for your site.

Also, reciprocal linking is prone to abuse. Webmasters can merely collude to link with one another, or worse, a webmaster can create multiple websites that he`ll link together, instead of relying on the strength of the content to garner the much needed back links.

5. Avoid getting too many back links for a start

When you have just built your website, naturally you would want your site to achieve some sort of success in the shortest possible time. But if your young website suddenly gets thousands of back links within a short period of time, then the search engines will be coming out to get you. They will interpret this as something fishy going on, and raise the red flag at your site.

They may even remove your site from their listings, because your website will be seen as having participated in unfavorable practices such as link farms to amass such a huge number of links. The key here is to control the growth of back links to your site so that you stay under the radar of the search engines. For example, if you are submitting articles to promote your site, then make sure that you limit yourself to just 2 submissions per week, so that the growth pattern of your back links will look more natural.

What I have shared with you here are examples that are derived from experiences and mistakes made by Internet marketing experts, who had learned them the hard way. Now, it is your turn to learn from their experience, so that you can succeed in this important Internet marketing strategy.