(Note: I really would prefer the questions as comments on the blog rather than direct e-mails so that it saves me and you time; but I’d rather you ask via e-mail than not ask at all)

Links are of critical importance when trying to get free traffic. Really, I can’t emphasize enough how powerful having quality links are to free traffic; in my opinion it is the best thing you can do to get a steady stream of willing buyers.

I did a little research for this and was appalled by some of the bad information out there, no wonder I get these questions. To be fair, there is also a lot of good information out there but obviously there is still massive confusion.

I’m going to answer these “burning questions” I’ve received as truthfully as I can.

Do I know everything?

Of course not, who does, but I’ve studied and implemented and get tell you what I’ve found to be the truth and what the current generally accepted “best practices” are.

You’ll need to try them and test them to see if they work in your specific situation but they work in most situations so they are good places to start if nothing else.

How Do I Get Thousands of Links?

This isn’t the right question to ask.
The point is you should much prefer quality links over quantity.

At one point in time, the more links you had the better it was but that time has come and gone. What matters now is the quality of your links not the quantity of them.

Look at it this way, say you wanted to get into real estate investing and you went looking for help.

You could walk out your door and ask your neighbor and walk around asking everyone who lived in your city and when you were done you’d have talked to thousands or millions of people, most of whom no nothing about real estate investing, and gotten a lot of answers and opinions.

But if you had Donald Trump’s personal cellular telephone number and could just call him and talk to him.

Which do you think would help you the most? Donald Trump, of course, because it isn’t the quantity of information but the quality.

The search engines care about quality links and consider them tremendously more important then links from other places.

I can tell you that links from places like Squidoo, Hub Pages, universities and other sites that are considered “authority sites” are worth hundreds or thousands of links from other unknown places; just like a recommendation from Donald Trump will be much more valuable than a recommendation by lots of strangers.

So don’t ask how you can get thousands of links, ask how you can get quality links. Of course, getting thousands of quality is the Holy Grail

Isn’t It Hard to Get Links?

Absolutely not!

Well wait, it depends upon what you mean by hard.

There are lots of ways to do it and those ways are really hard but they do take some work (all of which you can outsource so you don’t actually have to do it yourself.

Remember what I said above about the importance of quality links, well, most of them you can easily get links from.

Here’s some ways to get quality links, the more you do the better it is but doing any of them are better than not:

1. Create Squidoo Lenses
2. Create Hub Pages
3. Do Social Bookmarking (like Digg, Propeller, etc.)
4. Create articles for submission to article directories
5. Create press release and submit them
6. Create videos and submit them to YouTube, Viddler and video directories
7. Create and submit podcasts
8. Go to forums and other groups and submit questions, comments and answers
9. Go to other people’s blogs and post comments (you could even post one below!)
10. Enable your RSS feeds and submit to places like Feedburner where are sort of clearinghouses from RSS feeds
11. Use trackback services (I use http://rpc.pingomatic.com/, http://api.moreover.com/ping, and http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)
12. Use a Social Media Domination Machine like I do

These are all good ways of getting links, most of the high value links.

They do require some work but it isn’t hard and, like I said, you can pay others to do it.

Won’t Google Slap Me If I Try to Get Links?

Really, people are concerned about this.

There are not many successful Internet Marketers who don’t try to get links; successful being the key word here.

Google LOVES links but they don’t like it when people try to scam the system so you’re more a risk if your use “black hat” techniques.

If you stick to the ways above then you’ll be okay.

Also, the search engines like “normalcy” so if you, all of a sudden, have hundreds or thousands of articles, bookmarks and things pointing to your site this is unnatural and they will notice it and likely devalue the site.

What are “Bad Links”?

I got questions about whether this type of link or that type of link was bad.

There are virtually no “bad links” but some are better than others and some ways of using links are better than others.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Internal Links

For some reason, internal links have a bad reputation.

In fact, Google at least, seems to subtract points if you do not have internal links; so links to your privacy policy and disclaimers are easy ways to do this.

But if you reference one page from another, not uncommon, like I did above when I referenced previous blog posts, that is fine and can even be very helpful.

Excessive cross-linking though can be bad depending upon how it is done; for example, if every pages links to every other page,

Links to External Sites

Link internal links, search engines actually like links out to external sites.

Remember, they like natural and normal and it is very natural and normal to link out to other sites so doing this is okay.

What is not okay, and not natural and normal, is LOTS of links out to other sites, so don’t be excessive about it.

Also, there is some evidence that where you link to has a small effect on the value of your page so if you link to spammer, links farms, etc. you may get hurt; these are bad links.

Finally, as I talked about in my blog post, Google has decided it doesn’t like external links that are raw affiliate links so they would be (sort of) bad also.

Spammer Links

There is some logic to thinking that the search engines would consider links to your site from people like spammers and link farms would be bad links.

But, there is also logic to thinking that since you can’t control where links come from it isn’t your fault. After all, if you wanted to destroy your competitors you’d just get a lot of links to them from these bad sites if that worked. They certainly won’t help you though.

I have not seen any indications, nor have I heard any true experts say, that these are bad links so I wouldn’t worry about them.

Conclusion

There you have it, the truth about links.

Remember, it’s more important to get quality, high value links than thousands of just any old links.

You can get those links by: creating Squidoo Lenses, creating Hub Pages, doing Social Bookmarking, creating articles for article directories, creating press releases, creating videos, creating podcasts, commenting at forums and other groups, commenting at other people’s blogs, enabling your RSS feeds, using trackback services, use a Social Media Domination Machine

Remember that Google and the other search engines love links but they like them to be “natural” and don’t like it when people try to scam the system.

So while there are virtually no “bad links”, internal links and links out from your Web sites are good things because they fit in the normal and natural category.

Do you have any link advice?

Do you have any link questions?

If so, leave a comment and get a link!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this, particularly because the purpose of links it to get traffic and build a list.

You’ve probably seen lots of e-mail about the Tellman & Shawn from free, $1,997 List Pros list building course they’re giving away (well for $7.95 shipping and handling).

There is an exit pop that let’s you get a digital version for 99 cents so I did and, just so far, my opinion is you SHOULD get this, it is definitely worth $1 (well, it’s worth more actually!).

You can find it at http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/ListPros

Note: you are automatically enrolled in Tellman’s List Building Club, free for 30 days, if you don’t want to continue just call them or submit a support ticket. It’s worth trying out, I’ve gotten a lot out of it.

Talk soon,

David
The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. Don’t forget to pick up your free list building course from Tellman & Shawn. Go to http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/ListPros

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

The Truth About Links: Your Questions Answered

A somewhat spammy comment to that post got me to thinking beyond my reply. I decided we should talk more about “true” link building which I am saying is one of the few things your really need to concern yourself with for SEO purposes.

If you don’t think this is critically important to getting a flood of free traffic I really don’t know what to say; the evidence shows otherwise. It truly is a “must do” for getting free traffic particularly from Google.

But links ARE NOT created equal.

Some links are gold and many are basically worthless, as in, don’t even bother.

Google has become too sophisticated to fall for all the old tricks and the rules have changed.

Here are 5 myths about link building that are, well, myths. Don’t fall for them.

Myth 1: Links Raise Your Search Results Position

Actually, this isn’t a myth but many people make it seem like quantity is all important and that is most definitely a myth; it hasn’t been true for quite a while.

You’d think by now that nobody would believe this anymore but it persists more due to marketing skills than true value.

There are even ads, you’ve seen them, about buying lots of one-way links for some ridiculously low price; this is a case on not even getting what you pay for.

Yes, one-way links are great and the more the better but this is only true if the quality of the link is good.

Google looks at the source of the link and weights it accordingly so lots of low value links doesn’t buy you very much in terms of search engine positioning but a few well placed links can make all the difference.

I’ve seen just a few links on places like YouTube, Squidoo and Hub Pages bring a Google page one listing in hours, for a long tail keyword.

Think of this as deciding if you’d rather have 1,000 pennies or just one $100 bill.

Myth 2: Reciprocal Linking is Bad

This isn’t a myth either, yet it is.

What isn’t a myth is reciprocal links that are obviously spam links. Mostly these are links on pages that have a lot of links, particularly advertising links.

What you want are links within the body of articles, blog posts or other Web content and have the reciprocal link be the same.

This type of two-way linking is considered more “natural” and, if not abused, won’t be penalized.

Do avoid though sites that may be considered questionable like gambling, adult, hate and link farms.

Myth 3: Three-Way Linking is Good

Like the previous myths this both true and untrue.

Three-way linking, that is, page A links to page B that links to page C that links back to page A, is a way that marketers try to fool Google.

It worked for about a New York minute and then Google basically said “do you think we’re stupid” and devalued those links.

Now, if you have some sophisticated multi-linking strategy where the links are within the Web content then this can be an excellent strategy, assuming the links are high value, but otherwise mostly they aren’t worth the effort.

Myth 4: Get Links to Every Page or Only Get Links to Your Home Page

These two myths are both untrue.

In fact, they can be harmful.

Remember the ultimate purpose of these links is to make more money.

So links to pages that aren’t selling don’t really provide much value. Is there a slight chance that someone may buy something from you after going to your earnings disclaimer page? It is possible but the time and effort spent would be better used elsewhere; and how many people would even click on the link in the first place?

The same is true of your home page. Sending every one to it isn’t going to optimize sales.

The best tactic is to have some links go to your home page and other deeper into your site, to those pages that make money for you.

Myth5 : Links Are All You Need

I think you can see by now that this is a big myth.

I’m not talking about just the need for great content I am talking about your need links for high converting keywords and you need to optimize those.

Come on, does being number 1 in Google for “dog training” help you if you sell “weight loss” products.

Of course not (although if you got that ranking you probably should be selling “dog training” products too!)

You need to make sure you do the research and optimize for those keywords that can send you buying traffic and aren’t too competitive.

Doing some pay-per-click advertising, like Google AdWords, can help you do this relatively quickly.

Also doing some competitive analysis will help; that is, find out what keywords your main competitors are using and “steal” them by getting quality links for them.

Finally, do not discount the value of having your keywords in the “anchor text” of the links. This is the text of the link, that is, the text that is usually blue and underlined.

Find your best keywords for that page, the ones converting the best, and use them as anchor text, although don’t use the same text for every link, put some variety in so Google doesn’t think you’re trying to trick them.

Conclusion

Don’t fall for the link building myths that are prevalent. Mostly these are based on old or bad information and while they may have some truth to them beware:

1. Links Raise Your Search Results Position: they can but lots of worthless links will do little for you, focus of getting high quality links
2. Reciprocal Linking is Bad: it is unless you do it right and then it can be a valuable tool
3. Three-Way Linking is Good: in general, this is not really true any more although more sophisticated multi-way linking is still very good
4. Get Links to Every Page or Only Get Links to Your Home Page: don’t do either, link to your home page and to your pages that earn you money
5. Links Are All You Need: links are just the first step, get the right links and optimize them; even “steal” your competitors links and be sure to use your keywords in the anchor text

Link building is tremendously valuable but unless you do it right it can be wasted effort and can hurt you.

Do you have any link building tips or myths to bust? Leave a comment about it and about what you think of these myths.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. I mentioned using Google AdWords as a way to quickly research and optimize your keywords. I recently found that Google provides some decent basic training on AdWords, go to http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/index.html

O.O.Y. If you are looking for more on really using AdWords to get massive amounts of traffic then one of my favorites is Adwords List Building

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

5 Link Building Myths… Busted