When the Internet was new to me, I was fascinated by following links and going to new sites. It was like an adventure. And when I had my own website the first thing that I wanted to do was to place my site’s links on other sites. I began reciprocal linking (trading links with other sites) way back then, but 11 years later things have changed and now I dread getting a “reciprocal link request” in my email inbox. I have a few pet peeves with reciprocal linking, as it is practiced today, and here they are:

1. Most of the Requests are Automated
It used to be flattering to get a link request, knowing that someone had visited your site and wanted to exchange a link. These days most of the requests are done with software and it means that no one has really visited your site. Automation in itself is not bad, but it leads to all kinds of abuses, and it prevents you from picking out the good links from the bad. Even if you have an automated directory to handle link requests, which is what I installed, you will still be swamped with tons of link requests.

2. Most Link Requests are of Extremely Low Quality
The original idea of linking was to provide your own visitors with quality sites where they could visit next. The links were provided as a resource. Today, many sites have been set up only to make money from Adsense and other advertising programs. In addition, driven by the need to acquire PageRank many webmasters went into a link gathering frenzy and sent requests to any and all sites whether they were related to their site or not. If a link is to be a resource to visitors of both sites, then the two sites should somehow be related and the sites should be of comparable quality. Most reciprocal link requests fail this test.

3. Links are Buried on Pages Where Human Eyes Will Never See Them
In addition to being a resource to your own visitors, you want to exchange links in hopes of getting some targeted traffic back to your site. It used to be easier; a webmaster would have a site with say ten different pages and one of his pages would be a “links” page. On that page he would display 30 or so links. The link to this page would be prominent in the site’s navigation menu. You could be assured of getting some meaningful traffic if your link was placed on this kind of page.

That has all changed. People now build huge directories of hundreds of categories, stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory.

4. Many of the Link Requests are for “Three Way Links”
I find three-way links “creepy.” They work like this, if I link to site A, then they will give a link to my site originating from site B. This is done because Google is supposed to value one-way links more than reciprocal links. I can understand this. If someone links to you without asking you and doesn’t request a reciprocal link it means that your site is really good and this is why Google values true one-way links. However, the three-way links proposed by many people are just an attempt to trick the search engines; they are not true one-way links. Sooner or later Google will get wise to such schemes and this kind of effort will yield little benefit to the linking websites.

In addition, I dislike this kind of linking arrangement because you first have to check out who you are linking to, and then you are faced with checking another site that is going to link to you. Usually the site where the link to you will be placed is some kind of strange directory, a link-farm.

This is the state of reciprocal linking today. I delete most requests coming into my inbox, and do mass deleting on my automated systems as well. Now I don’t want to end on a negative note so here are a few suggestions on how to get quality incoming links without adding another reciprocal link request to the flood that is already out there:

5. Make Your Site so Cool that People Will Link to You Without Asking
People come to the Internet to solve a problem, find a solution and get information. If you can make your website a true resource and a great place where visitors can get the information that they need, then it will not go unnoticed. Even if you have a commercial e-commerce site, it is possible to add reviews, articles and information. This additional information will help your own customers and will be a resource for the entire web. Who knows? Maybe one day you will check your referrer logs and see that Wikipedia is linking to you. This is the goal, but it will take some work to achieve it.

6. Get Involved in Blogs and Forums that are Related to Your Field of Expertise
You can learn something from forums and blogs and you can contribute something as well. You can usually leave your url when you make a comment or a posting. If you offer solid advice, you will get a good online reputation and become known as an expert in your field. This newfound recognition as an expert, combined with links from these blogs and forums will be worth much more than low quality reciprocal links.

7. Get into Article Marketing
Article marketing means that you will write articles about your field of interest and distribute them for publication on other websites, blogs and ezines with a link back to your site. Each time your article is published on a website you get a one-way link to your site. As with most good things, this method has been pounced upon by Internet marketers and the net is flooded with a lot of low-quality articles. However, if you produce meaningful articles, you can still get a lot of benefit by distributing your articles.

8. Do Judicious Reciprocal Linking
There is nothing wrong with the idea of websites trading links. However, if you are going to do it, then only link to a site that you think is a good one or has some value for your web visitors. Make sure that your link will be placed on a page that has the potential of sending you some traffic. Make your request with an email that clearly shows that you are a living and breathing human being and not a robot.

So, instead of adding to the spam-like flood of reciprocal link requests, go about building your own content and start using more reliable methods of increasing the number of incoming links to your site.

By Donald Nelson

I now propose to go right out on a limb and say that design has very little to do with search engine optimisation. This is a sweeping generalisation, I admit, and one to which my designer friends will take instant umbrage. But it is true to all intents and purposes. Design can certainly assist in achieving good optimisation. By that I mean it will assist if it doesn’t hinder the process with acres of code that the robots need to wade through in order to find the potatoes and gravy. Or if the navigation throughout the site is logical and easy to achieve. Or if the pages are designed to load quickly.

Other than that, optimisation is all in the writing.

Now, I am a copywriter with around 40 years’ experience in the advertising business; and there can be few people in the world who know less about design than I do. But my entire working life seems to have been spent arguing with designers about the length of copy in relation to the size of the picture in any given piece of work. And I confess that I mostly lost, thereafter seeing my words relegated to four lines of 8-point Myopic beneath an illustration the size of a house.
In website terms, however, the tables have been nicely turned. Here’s why.

To optimize a website, you first need to take a good, long look at the HTML meta tags of Title, Description and Keywords. Do you see what I see? Yes, they are words. And all of these words require researching and embellishing. Likewise, take a peek under that all-singing, all-dancing Home page banner – and what do you see? More words. These words, unlike those used in the meta tags above, are written for both search engine and potential human customer alike.

Search engines love words. Great, isn’t it?

Given all of this, it is pretty clear that all you need in order to properly optimize a website is a lexicon of well thought out words – keywords and keyphrases - sprinkled like generous confetti throughout the meta tags and the body copy. Well, almost.

In the first place, those words must be relevant. They must state clearly what it is you are selling and where you are selling it. The general marketing principle is:

(a) product description,
(b) product benefits,
(c) region of operation.

What you don’t need are turgid explanations about the size of your company and who the product is designed for. Your potential customers will mostly be bright enough to know whether or not they are in the market for what you are offering. So to say, for instance, that your ‘range of gardening gloves is ideal for gardeners’ is a touch obvious, not to mention redundant and a waste of valuable space. In all promotional writing, brevity and clarity are the two most important attributes. But I digress.

So how do you go about collating these key words and phrases? First, you could invest in software that generates your meta tags and keywords for you. Fair enough; there are some good programmes around, and I would be the first to applaud any device that makes life a touch easier. On the other hand, you could take the more intellectually satisfying route and do it yourself.

“Oh, no,” you cry, reaching for the gin bottle. “I don’t do writing!” To which I answer: “You don’t have to. Someone has already done it for you.” I should tell you, straight away, that I am not an advocate of plagiarism. However, it is not theft to take a good, long look at somebody else’s literary ideas and adapt them to your own ends. I will cite John Donne’s penchant for re-working William Shakespeare as a good example of this. And what is good enough for Mr Donne, is certainly good enough for me. So, to formulate your keywords and phrases, why not research what your competitors are doing, then adopt and adapt? By competitors, I mean serious competitors, the people who are listed at No. 1 on Google, Yahoo and MSN in your sphere of activity. Delve into their meta-tags, analyze their body copy, figure out what it is that convinces the search engines to place them at No. 1.

If you feel that such a ploy is a little devious, you can console yourself with the thought that the writers of the No.1 material probably pinched it from someone else in the first place. So that’s all right then.

And now for the denouement to this piece, which is the most important bit of all.

We have established with some certainty, I think, that a website stands or falls in the listings stakes by the quality of its words. Of course, that quality is determined by the search engines, not your old professor of English. So the judgement is in algorithm terms rather than literary terms. That’s fine; we are simply trying to accommodate the engines, not win a Nobel Prize.

Further, in my not so humble opinion, every Home page should carry a stick of keyphrase-rich body copy. And this stick of copy should be placed where it can be seen, read and acted upon by the search engines. As close to the top of the page as possible.

Sadly, so many Home pages don’t have this attribute. The page designs leap from whiz-bang banner to product list or string of pics with no intervening tit-bits of information – in the shape of copy - designed to feed the search engine robots. There is little for the robots to get their shiny little teeth into.

Let me prove the point. On several occasions recently, I have been asked to optimize websites on which the Home pages were bereft of any meaningful copy. Within an hour or two, the copy was written and the sites posted to the engines. Within a couple of days, the sites in question were featuring nicely on the first couple of pages of the major engines. Previously, they were barely indexed.

There’s nothing magical about any of this. Because, guess what, search engine optimisation is all in the writing.
If this has been helpful, maybe you’ll let me know.

By Pat Quinn 

The herd mentality nevër fails to amaze me. When the pay-per-clíck concept was first pioneered in 1997-98 by GoTo.com (now Yahoo! Search Marketing), it was years before the model was widely accepted. GoTo virtually created the market for pay-for-performance search single-handedly and redefined how businesses market online while other search engines sat on their collective hands. Then, when it was obvious that there was “Gold in Them Thar (PPC) Hills” hundreds of search engines entered the PPC arena and hordes of advertisers followed suit.As a search engine advertising model, pay-per-clíck was, and is, brilliant in its simplicity. In theory, it is a perfect way to bill advertisers based on consumer interest in their advertisements. Unfortunately, in real life monëy can bring out the worst in human, and business, nature. In today’s search engine reality, pay-per-clíck should be on its last legs. But, as anyone with a knowledge of the search engine industry knows that simply isn’t the case.Let’s first examine the main reasons why advertisers should be abandoning PPC in droves: 

1. Cost
According to the Fathom Online Keyword Price Index, the average keyword price paid by online advertisers reversed a downward trend and increased 16.5% percent to $1.48 in the third quarter of 2006, up from a $1.43 per clíck at the end of 2005.