One Way Links Versus Reciprocal Links

Its common knowledge that one of the most important factors that search engines use to rank websites is link popularity but which type of links should you use to improve your rankings in the results pages?

Many people believe that the more incoming links a website has the higher up in the search engine results pages it will rank. But its not as simple as that because with so many websites competing with each other its far more important to have high quality links from related websites rather than hundreds of links from unrelated websites.

In fact, having too many links from unrelated websites can actually harm your rankings because the search engines want relevant results and they are now implementing a new penalty on websites which are excessive with their reciprocal link exchanging. It seems that having too many unrelated reciprocal links eventually works against you and lowers your website rank.

As well as this, if any of your link partners suddenly become banned and you are still linking to them you will alert the search engines and this is one of the main reasons why many websites get banned and the owner has no idea why.

The key to successful reciprocal link exchanging is having a smaller number of high quality link partners from websites that are related and highly relevant to the content of your website, so quality is more important than quantity.

Instead of using reciprocal links its far better to use one way links to improve your rankings. Search engines regard high quality one way links from related websites as the most important factor for ranking websites. The problem is that obtaining one way links takes effort and can be very time consuming but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Writing articles and submitting them to article directories is the most effective way of obtaining one way links and it also helps build your reputation as a legitimate marketer. Most article directories cater for a wide range of topics so you can write about almost any subject you choose. By providing quality content you are rewarded with a one way link back to your website (some allow multiple links).

Each article that you submit will have your resource box which consists of a brief description about yourself and your business and a link back to your website. The most important part of your link is the anchor text which describes the website. Before you submit your article you will need to find a keyword phrase to use for the anchor text (using a keyword research tool such as Good Keywords).

For example, instead of using a keyword phrase such as "weight loss" which has a lot of competition, its far better to use a keyword phrase which has less competition such as "fast weight loss tips". The more high quality related one way links that point to your website using the same keyword phrase as the anchor text, the higher up in the search engines it will rank for that keyword phrase.

So if you want to improve your rankings in the search engine results pages you should seriously consider using one way links rather than reciprocal links. It will take longer and require more work but the rewards make it worthwhile.

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This article was written by Simon Akers who is the editor of the Marketing Oasis newsletter, a free internet marketing ezine packed with tips to help you succeed and increase your profits: http://www.MarketingOasis.comThis article is free for republishing
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