Article Surfing Archive

It's no secret that the 'Net keeps changing all the time; what is a secret to many is how to make the most of the 'Net and sell some books. When it comes down to it, that's the #1 focus of publishers and authors alike. The 'Net has become the place to go for book sales, but it's more than just having your book listed on http://Amazon.com or your own website, it's about getting people to know about it. With millions of websites coming online every month, that task is getting tougher and tougher each day.

It seems like only yesterday we were telling you that reciprocal linking was *the* way to go to get traffic. What is reciprocal linking? Well, it's where you give a link on your site to someone else and they give one to you. This tactic may have worked in 2006 but it's no longer a good idea. Why? Because search engines are now looking at high quality one-way (inbound) links. Says Susan Gilbert, AME's SEO expert: "Google has declared 2007 as the year of the incoming link ' high quality, one-way links. Now more than ever, it is important to create a long term site building presence that focuses on the community aspect of the World Wide Web."

A backlink is a link which directs others towards your site. They are sometimes referred to as inbound links. These are links that go from another website to your website. But it's more than just that, it's also about having backlinks that matter. If you haven't done a vanity search on yourself in a while try this: Google your name and see what sites come up (when you Google your name use the "+" sign between your first and last name for a more accurate search). Now take a quick peek at the list of sites and see how they rank according to Google, are they on the 20th page of a Google search or are they on the 1st or 2nd page? These are all indicators of high quality, high traffic sites. Now look at the sites that are in your topic/market. Ideally, you want every site linking to you to be your market. That's the definition of a high quality, high traffic site.

The number of backlinks that your site has is an indication of how popular or important it is according to the major search engines. Backlinks are important for SEO, because search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, will give more credit to those sites with a good number of quality backlinks. They will then consider these sites more relevant than others in the results pages of a search query.

Most search engines will want websites to have a level playing field, and so will more often than not look for natural links that have been built slowly over time. Link farms or companies that promise hundreds of backlinks will do nothing but get your site delisted by the search engines. Once this happens, it could take months, and even years to get it back online. (Delisting means that the site no longer comes up in search engines).

Although it can be fairly easy to manipulate the links on a web page in order to achieve a higher ranking, it is a lot harder to influence a search engine with external backlinks from another site. This is why these feature so highly in a search engine's algorithm.

According to research we've done, there are a number of ways in which you can get additional backlinks to your website.

1. Reciprocal Linking.

This is where you link to another site that provides the same service or product as you and they in turn have a link to your site on theirs. While very popular in the past, this exchange of links is not as valuable as one-way links.

2. Site Submissions.

Submit links for your site to directories which allow free submissions, or if you can afford it, some paid directories. There are many sites which offer a service where you can submit your site details to numerous sites. Plus, if you want, you can always create your own directory of similar websites.

3. Blogging.

This has now become an integral part of the Internet, and is one of the most effective ways of linking.

You either have the choice of placing a few words of comments on to someone else's blog, or you may want to link to them from your own blog. However, with so many people creating blogs and wanting to link to each other's blogs, this can be extremely time-consuming.

4. Articles.

This is another way of getting great backlinks. It's vital that any articles you write are on the subject, informative and thorough in relation to your site.

Quality articles published on article sites are a great way of getting even more backlinks to your site.

Always include a resource box at the end, as this will include that all important backlink to your site. This resource box should also include a short biography regarding you and your site.

5. Social Bookmarking.

This is a way to record your favorite sites online at the various social bookmarking sites, and that way the search engine spiders pick up your bookmarks and follow these backlinks to your websites.

6. Creating Feeder Sites.

Adding a MySpace or Squidoo page with links back to your website is extremely beneficial and expands your online presence at the same time.

The above are just a few ways that you can get backlinks to your websites to help them rank more highly in the search engines and attract more traffic. Using these techniques you should see an increase in the volume of traffic arriving at your website.

The important thing is to take action today. Things are getting more and more competitive, with thousands of websites coming online every day. If you want to succeed online (and everyone needs to be online), you'll want to get started now.

Increasing ranking and traffic are going to be our continued focus in the months and weeks to come. As offline markets become more populated and less accessible, the Internet is the place to go to sell your book.