Search Engine Optimization and Submission Basics

ADVICE > Search Engine Optimization and Submission 101

Now your site has META tags on it. Next we need to make you "popular"... link popular that is! Google, among others, weighs the number of "relevant" links to your site on other sites. The important word there is RELEVANT.

There are a number of "link exchanges" and "link farms" out there. The answer here is NO. You need to hand pick the sites you are linking to and ask them to reciprocate. Yes, this take some time, but a good number of RELEVANT links to your site will only help you out.

Want to know how popular your site is? Click here. Run this for your site and then run it for a site like CNN. Try running this on a few of your competitors and see how you stack up.

So, how do you get RELEVANT sites to link to you? First, set up a links page. Now give some thought to what type of folks are going to find and use your site. If you are selling used comic books, you may want to find other sites with information about comic book collecting, sites selling used toys, etc. The idea is to find sights offering complementary goods and services to your site. You can list your competition if you want, but you might be sending them some potential customers.

Use search engines, good manners and a well written email to ask for the link. You may also want to post the link to the site you are asking to link to you prior to sending them an email. It may help move them along.

As stated above, this is not an overnight process and will take some time, effort and some work on your part. A good goal to shoot for is 150 sites linking to you. You'll be amazed at the "weight" your site will start to carry at this level.

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