Making the back links to your site grow

There seems to be some persistent misconception's out there, that once you submit to the main engines, and park your banner on a few tops sites and exchanges, your done. Or just the opposite, that you must re submit your site to the main engines on a regular basis.

Well, not really correct in either case, here's why.


Search engines and directories are not stable:
They come and they go just like any site, so to do a one time round of submissions and never again will not work, if you expect to have good position / rank on the engines.

Back links are always in flux:
The number of back links to a site, grows and declines, sometimes at a rapid rate. Especially if there has been a recent change in the criteria of the engines. Just recently mine lost some 14 thousand links according to the engines. Now did I really “ lose” all of those ? Not really, a lot are still there, but a percentage of them yes, they are really gone. As the sites, directories or engines they were on are gone. So the number of back links you had, can and will, slowly dwindle away without care to keep the number up.


So what to do ?

Keep tabs on how many back links you have:
There are lots of free tools on the net that will let you check how many links point to your site for all the major engines, all at once. If you want, you can go to almost any engine and do it yourself by placing in commands such as: link:http://yoursitename.com and most engines will give you all the links it can find that relate to or are linked to that site name. But no matter how you do it, learn what your “ number” is.

Keep it growing:
Once you have done your original submissions. Wait about three months, then go looking again to see if there is anything new out there. I can promise you  that there will be. New engines and such are listed everyday. Every time I do submissions for a new client I find new places to put my own, as I must seek out tailored engines and such for them. Which adds to my list of places to submit a site.

How to find the new places:
The key word here is ” NEW” places to put it . Use the engines as the tool they are, to find more places to list your site. Just go to any engine and type in “ submit site keyword” whatever your main keyword(s) happens to be. The same is true for add site, add url, submit url, list site and so on and so on. By putting up your keywords along with the “ add site” you will get lists of special engines, directories, personal sites that exchange links etc. with your kind of site. I would also suggest adding the word “free”, unless you have a budget for listing.

Having a “surfeit” of back links will give your ranking some “ protection” for the times when they shake things up and you can suddenly lose large numbers of links. Recall above when I told you I “ lost “ some 14 thousand links in one week. My ranking did not suffer for this. Why ?

Because my total count at the time even with this “ loss” was still over 20 thousand back links world wide and has doubled since then. So the sites links can flex even to the tune of thousands at a time without suffering major loss of ranking and placement. If you have enough of them to withstand the shake ups.

Do I need that many ?
No, many “ good” ranking sites have only a thousand or so and some a great deal less and rank quite well, but I'm a fanatic about it. It's a challenge to me, as a designer and web SEO to keep the high listings and the ranking for as long as possible and this is the goal of any web master. Back links are only one part of what makes for top of the engine listings however, don't lose site of that. Links are only a small part of the over all picutre.


There is no magic to it. It's a matter of diligent work on your part or the part of your SEM ( search engine marketer ).

A note of warning, not all SEO/SEM companies are the same. Be leary of any that “ promise “ you high ranking in X amount of time or that tell you they will re submit you to the “ same” engines as they did the first time, and call it maintaining your placement.

There are only a few engines out there that want you to do that, the rest will ban you for doing it. So any that tell you they will resubmit you every three months to the same engines you are already in, are courting getting your site black listed off the engines.

Every site needs tailored submissions to its needs and its alone. Other than getting listed with the “ big” boys, all the other back links and engine placements, site to site exchanges, depends on the kind of site it is, as to where it should go for the best targeted traffic flow. This takes planning and thought on your part and/or a SEM company who cares about your site, not just your wallet.

More soon
Esta

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