by Lucas Heijn

Links to your site is one of the things that Google looks for to decide how important your site is, and therefore its ranking.

The most important thing about links is to keep it relevant. If the page you link to is relevant to the content on your site this is good. If the site is relevant this is better. Not all links are created equal.

Here are some ways to get quality links to your site:

Reciprocal Links.

Once upon a time they were considered very good, today they don’t have the value they once did but they are still useful. It is important that the links you get in this way are very relevant to the content in your site. This way reciprocal links will still increase your ranking.

Writing Articles

One of the best ways of improving your ranking and increasing relevant links to your site is article writing. You need to be a regular contributor of articles. Most article sites will allow you a link back to your site in the bio section. There are hundreds of article directories that you can post your articles to. Here are a few you really need to use: EzineArticles.com, ArticleCity.com, and GoArticles.com.

Link Farms

Go as fast as you can away from these. Links to link farms can downgrade your legitimate links. Link farms are sites with scrolling pages of just links. They are viewed as spammers by the search engines. If you associate your site with them your site by association will also be viewed as part of the spammer’s network.

Directories

Directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ and other reputable directories can greatly increase the value of your links. Try to get your site listed with DMOZ. It’s not easy but well worthwhile. To do so you will need to find the perfect category and submit your site. Keep submitting your site every 4 – 6 months until you are listed.

It is easier to get listed with Yahoo. Easier in one way and that is you don’t need to keep trying. Not so easy in another way and that is it will cost you $299. Google sees Yahoo directory as somewhat of an authority. Your link will be valuable because of this.

Another link that is important is anchor text. Anchor text is the text in the hyperlink. An example of anchor text is this: For the very best in web hosting you can’t go past LinksParadise. The words “web hosting” is hyperlinked. This is anchor text. I used “web hosting” as this would be a keyword my site is optimized for. If you did a search with Google for the words “Click Here” you will find that the #1 site for that search term is Adobe. This is because many sites link to Adobe Acrobat Reader, and use the anchor text “Click Here”

An anchor text link that uses the keyword or key phrase is far better. For example if you were targeting the keyword phrase; “low cost web hosting” You would anchor it this way: “to really benefit from our low cost web hosting here are some pointers” The keyword phrase we are targeting is our anchor text.

This of course is just a few of the thing that will help to increase the ranking of your site with the search engines.

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