By Jason Hulott

There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the search engine world of late and there are lots of conspiracy theories as to why these things happen.

It is easy as a webmaster to get caught up in these webs of intrigue.

You get email notes about them, you view so-called experts’ thoughts on bulletin Boards – hey you probably even read things in newsletter articles!

Well I hope so anyway….

The big driver for webmasters currently appears to be content and link building.

While link building is important I don’t believe it makes Queen. Maybe a Prince. Content and links DO go hand in hand but, without relevance, the Kingdom is doomed. Sorry I will stop the analogy now!

If your site is about finance, then finance content is best supported by finance link exchanges. Relevance!

If your site is about finance, then finance content supported by casino link exchanges from a PR8 site while in the short term may help,…but all the signs are saying this is not a long term strategy.

Okay,so what is the best strategy?

Keep EVERYTHING relevant. It is that simple.

Make sure that you only swap or link to sites that are relevant to the content on your pages. Yes I am suggesting link exchanging on pages of your site not a links page.

Links pages seem to be being abused. There are rumours that pages called links, resources or partners are not passing page rank. You could be wasting your time building links that are not giving you any benefits!

Delivering relevant links from relevant content is the future.

Look at sites such as www.bbc.co.uk or www.independent.co.uk. News sites have the right idea. They have 2 or 3 relevant internal links to other articles on the same topic or links to internal tools that are related. These usually can be found at the right hand side of the article.

They also then have weblinks or external links to sites of interest that are related to the topic. These are relevant!

Another benefit of this is that with a content rich site you can add hundreds of links quite legitimately and really add some value both to your Rankings and your users.

With a content-poor site it is difficult, you have to add link pages or create a links directory. A five page site will need to add 10 or 12 good link pages to compete and even then with algorithm changes, this may not be prudent.

Having a site with 400 pages means you can easily add 3 links per page, so you have 1200 link options straight away.

Hopefully this explains that relevance runs a close second to content.

Always bear in mind when writing content that relevant links will not only boost your search engine rankings, but you will also add a service to your visitors.

2004 © Speedie Consultants Limited. All Rights Reserved.

Jason Hulott is Director of Speedie Consultants Limited , leading specialists in Revenue Generation whose specific aim is to drive more revenue to websites. Their main area of focus are the insurance, finance, and automotive industries.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?If-Content-is-King,-then-Surely-Relevance-is-Queen!&id=1295

By Vik Tailor

Lately, there have been a lot of heated discussions regarding link building. Is it ethical to create a link building campaign? Does Google or any other search engine penalize for “link farms” (a bunch of non-related links created for the SOLE purpose of increasing search engine ratings)? Is the “link building era” over?

Link Farms

Many webmasters claim that Google penalizes websites for link farms. If this is so, why are a link farm sites that have a page rank of 5 on their link farm page? Let me give you an example, go to Google.com, type in any popular keyword(s) and append the word “links” to it. For example, “ABCD Links.” Notice you’ll get tones of websites that are linking to unrelated sites, but still have a great PR. I do not encourage link farming in any way or form, but building valuable partnerships is something I do encourage. If you’re a jewelry site and you’re exchanging links with an antiques site, I think this is a great thing. It’s very possible that someone searching for jewelry may have an interest in antiques. I own a few sites and the hits I receive from partially related sites are phenomenal. Most of my websites are targeted towards webmasters so I receive hits from all sorts of sites. Remember, many webmasters claim to know the truth regarding search engine algorithms, but no one knows the EXACT TRUTH except the programmers at the search engines. Webmasters may have been penalized in the past for link farms and doorway pages (pages created around certain keywords for the sole purpose of redirecting surfers to the main page), but who’s to say why some HAVEN’T been penalized.

Who Should I Create Link Partnerships With?

1. Create link partnerships with sites related to your site.

2. Create link partnerships with sites that have an audience that may be interested in your products

3. Exchange homepage links with websites that fit in your genre. You’ll receive a link on a page with a good ranking and you’ll get quality, targeted hits.

How Do You Find Link Partners?

1. Signup with an automated links management provider that organizes your links and helps find link partners. Automated tools are the best because they help you save time. Uploading and downloading your pages for every link exchange can be a huge pain and very time consuming. Automated tools are NOT link farms because they give you complete control of who you exchange links with. If a member exchanges links with every website, he/she might be abusing the tool. If a member uses the tool responsibly, it can be very effective.

2. This is a great little exercise I would recommend to anyone.

a. Write down 20 search terms pertaining to your website

b. Go to http://www.google.com and type in a search term written in step A

c. Contact as many websites as possible listed under that search term and ask them to exchange inner page or homepage links with you. If they’re NOT interested, ask whether they would be interested in selling advertising space. If your website is fairly new, you may want to ask sites for advertising prices. Free hits are the best hits but sometimes you might have to go the extra lap and pay for service. I wouldn’t recommend spending over $100 / month for advertising UNLESS it’s a high traffic site with your site audience. The best deals are the ones that offer $10-25 / month. There are sites out there that will sell SUPER cheap advertising, and others that charge an arm and a leg.

EVERYONE gets rejected sometime or another so keep your head up and keep moving along! The internet is comprised of Billions of websites. If you’re rejected 500 times, you still have MANY business opportunities left! This is a continuous job so set aside time every week to do this. If you don’t have time for this, then you don’t have time to make money.

3. Hire a link building firm (this can be quite expensive but if you have money, its minimal work for you)

PageRank

Pagerank is a great tool but don’t use it as your ONLY measurement for success. I can’t explain everything about pagerank but a good explanation is given at http://www.google-watch.org/pagerank.html.

Conclusion

In conclusion, link building is not only for increasing link partners and search engine rankings, it’s also used to create partnerships and establish profitable relationships with other webmasters. Link building is a tedious process, but one of the best for getting free (sometimes not), targeted hits from other websites.

Vik Tailor is the owner of http://www.linkexchanged.com and http://www.buyadvertisingonline.com. He has been in the online advertising industry for over 4-5 years and has extensive online marketing knowledge.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vik_Tailor
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Starting a new site is no small task if you want to do it right. Even some of us who have been doing it for a long time still make mistakes, However most of us who are successful in this business don’t keep making the same ones. The site I am following is Meme Connection. I started the site five days ago with a stock theme from Revolution Two. I am quite pleased they have gone to open source licensing so I can give you the theme with all of my upgrades in the SEO department, because frankly it needed them.

Now five days on in the blog I have linked it to a couple of my other blogs, registered with Technorati, made a few posts, and promoted it off an on in my social network. For the first time today I am seeing an Alexa score which we will call my base score of 7,169,215. This isn’t bad since I know bloggers who have been around for years and don’t have scores that good. My target is to have that down to a 1,000,000 by the first of the year. I also have a goal of hitting PR 1 with the next Google PR update do out either at the end of December or first part of January. I won’t be to disheartened if I don’t make that goal since this is a very new blog. If it doesn’t happen my goal is no less than PR 2 in the March/April update with an Alexa score of 250k or lower.

What is next for the blog? In the coming days I expect to submit new memes from all of my existing blogs, and maybe from a few more new domains. Backlinks are the key to search engine success. Now that we are live I am going to work on putting the link directory and forums up on the site and start to build the community. You can follow Meme Connections on the Memes for Blogs site or subscribe to our primary feed. You can follow this continuing story and keep updated on how well the Alexa ranking is doing at least twice a week on How To Blog. You can also get twitter updates of both of these blogs and all of my others by following me, BradHart.

In my quest to provide an every better experience for all my readers I have added a new feature in the way of the WP Link Directory. This handy plugin allows site owners to make use of the constant flow of internet traffic. Whether you are actively promoting your wordpress based site or not, this plugin also comes with some handy searchable identifiers. Like CommentLuv, NoFollow Free and KeywordLuv blogs using the WP Link Directory can seach out blogs using it by searching for “Powered by WP Link Directory“. If you don’t want potential spammers finding you that way their is the option of removing the text link. There is also the option of requiring a reciprocal link for sites of a designated page rank to increase your own backlinks and a nofollow option. Post Origin: Local News and Newspapers Click this link to get your own syndication code. Update:  Be advised Wordpress 2.7 beta 2 has problems displaying this plugin.  It works but the display is kind of screwy and it hangs up on the scripting a bit.