1) "14 Link Exchange Strategies To Boots Your Internet Profits (Part 2)"

2) "Major Index Update for Google, Some Relief for Sandboxed Sites."

3) "Classified Ads."

4) "Tell Us What You Think!"

As I promise in my previous newsletter issue, today we cover the last part of link exchange strategies. Just to remember the first seven strategies, read again Part 1 of this article. Now, let's continue our link exchange journey.

   Link Exchange Strategy #8 -- Link Renting From On-Topic Web Sites

This is a relatively new strategy for link exchange. In a few words, a link renting means that you pay a monthly fee to a certain online company in return for a text/graphic link pointing back to your own web site. Link renting has a few advantages because you actually "take" a part from the popularity and online traffic of another site.

You can start a profitable link renting campaign and maximize your internet profits if you ask yourself (and renting company) the next questions:

• how related is the renting company web site audience to your product/service?
• how much online traffic does his web site receive?
• what is the quality of this traffic?
• what advertising format can you use?
• what is the advertiser turnover rate?
• are your links static and direct links?
• how many (advertising) links are on the page?
• what is the Page Rank, who links to this page, is the page well connected to all site and the home page?
• is the traffic seasonal or full year?
• is a side wide or individual page link renting?
• do they provide more information regarding the past advertising experiences?

   Link Exchange Strategy #9 -- 'Fraud Exchange' Tricks

When you do businesses online be well prepared to find different kinds of Netpreneurs. Most of them will try to link exchange the right way, but a small portion will try to trick you. Here's how...

Usually they send you an email and include the URL of a page where you can find your link, and normally, ask for a link back. You open his page in a new browser window and take a look at his work. Of course, your link is there. But you want to take a closer look. What you discover? A stand alone ("orphan") web page, with no Page Rank, no INbound links, 5-levels away from the home page. Sometime these 'fraud' people want to exchange links for a domain which is different from the one who include your own link!

Remember: in order to boots your link popularity from a link exchange strategy, you should ALWAYS have a link back from a page with a maximum 2 level away from the home page, has a solid numbers of INbound links, a link from the index (home) page, and the URL of the link page come from the same domain as the rest of the site.

In order to track down all these and many other cool stuffs, you can use a masterpiece software like OptiLink. OptiLink software finds relevant link partners by searching for: web site's that link to your competitors, web site's that offer products and/or services complementary to yours. At a click of a button, OptiLink finds potential sites to request links from. You may rank potential link exchange partners by:

• links into the site (link popularity)
• outgoing links (the lesser the better)
• link ratio (number of links you have to share the page with)
• target links (number of links to the target page)
• Alexa traffic rank (measure of a certain traffic to a web site)
• Google PageRank (measure of link analysis according to Google)

These information are important because they can tell you which domains are Authorities (a large number of links in) and Hubs (a large number of outgoing links), so you can better choose the linking partners from your subject area.

   Link Exchange Strategy #10 -- Maintain Consistency In the Format of Your URL

I face to this strategy for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I made mistakes, so here what you have to do. But first a simple question. Are you aware that...

http://your-site.com
http://your-site.com/
http://your-site.com/index.html

http://www.your-site.com
http://www.your-site.com/
http://www.your-site.com/index.html

That's right. And, if those who link to you use six different URL formats to point visitors to your "home" page then your Page Rank is being diluted by a factor of six -- not good! You simply must do everything in your power to standardize your incoming URL format in order to consolidate your Page Rank. Doing so will produce the maximum relevancy-boost possible from your incoming links.

And guess what? I learn this from the "Unfair Advantage" book and newsletter. If you need a place from where to start learning basic and advanced search engine optimization strategies, Stephen Mahoney's book and newsletter is a must!

   Link Exchange Strategy #11 -- Watch Your Back To Whom Link Back And How Much They Will Stay

The best way to obtain more INbound links is to build a useful web site. As long as you provide quality information or services, your visitors will tend to link to you without having to reverse this action (also called by many webmasters as "natural" linking).

In Part 1 of this article posted online on my Internet Marketing Profits Newsletter - issue 51, I told you about a quick method to get INbound links -- it's about writing articles. There is a little "story" here.

I encourage you to allow people to post as many articles you have, but I have to tell you about the reverse of this method. I also write articles and allow people to post them on their sites (for example, check my Internet Marketing Profits Center Article Syndicator). Take a look at the end of every article and you'll also discover a viral aspect of this strategy.

The little 'nightmare' came when some webmasters from un-related web sites post my articles (the Kick-Starting E-mail Profit Growth From One Single Shot! article was posted on a site about... online gambling). Even if ALL links count, these kind of links can harm your Google PR if they come from banned (penalized) web sites.

What do you need to do? Try to email to the respective owner and politely explain him your problem. Tell him why the action he perform will not improve his PR or get more listings on search engine page results (SERP's). If you are lucky, he will understand and remove the article. If you want to keep the article, ask the webmaster to insert the [rel="nofollow"] tag into your links code. This way search engines will NOT find your page but you can drive some visitors to your site.

And this lead me to the second aspect of this problem. Some unscrupulous people, once you set the link partnership, will remove your link from the referrer page without letting you know (usually after less than 30 days). A common scam you should protect yourself. How? You need to automatize the process of checking your links back.

The best way is to use a specialized software. You can buy Arelis or Zeus Robot, but I suggest to use again OptiLink. Simply enter your list of partner sites and, at a click of a button, OptiLink software checks your link partners' web site's to ensure they are still linking to the right page on your site, from the right page on their site, using the right keywords! Are you beginning to see how easy this is?

Download a copy of OptiLink right now!

   Link Exchange Strategy #12 -- What Do You Need To Avoid

Read this section carefully because reciprocal link scams are on the rise. No matter what other people said, keep this part warm into your mind.

The worst nightmare in link exchange becomes the FFA (Free For All) pages or services. With dozens or hundreds of irrelevant OUTbound links on a page, FFA's or "link farms" are worthless and very harmful for your web site.

Don't waist your valuable time to swap links with someone who design a web site only for exchanging link purposes. Webrings are also a "bad" thing for your site. Also irrelevant for a search engine are links from un-related and controversial web sites.

Anytime you have a simple doubt about a potential link exchange partner, don't hesitate: do not accept a link trade. Past experiences show me that hesitations on the Internet could cost you money.

You shouldn't exchange links with sites that are banned (penalized) by the search engines. A web site which shows a PR zero in the Google toolbar could be banned or just brand new. Be careful with sites that have many links in their link partner directories and still a PR of 0 (use WayBackMachine to check how "old" is the page).

Lastly, it is a good idea NOT to link back to web sites which are not listed by Google, Yahoo and MSN. But... if the site it's new and has a potential value in the near future, save the information into your computer and check them again a few months later.

If the site owner is serious, in couple of time he will be listed on major search engines. If not, simply delete him from your link files.

   Link Exchange Strategy #13 -- Do You Really Need Pay-Per-Click Search Engines?

Pay-Per-Click search engines are great because, once you've chosen the keywords people will use to find you in the search engines, it's easy to attract visitors who are interested in what you have to offer for just a few pennies.

To get a top-ten position in the free search engines, you'd probably be looking at a few months (at least) of arduous effort. But in the pay-per-clicks, you can grab the #1 spot in just minutes! That's because all you have to do is see how much the person who has the #1 position is paying per click, and simply outbid them by paying one penny more!

Done right, pay-per-click advertising can be very profitable; however, you can lose a lot of money with your PPC advertising if you're not careful. To determine how much you can afford to bid on your keywords, you will need to understand the value of each visitor to your site. How's that? Read again the article called "Three Cheap and Effective Ways to Drive Tons of Highly Targeted Traffic to Your Web Site" from my Internet Marketing Profits Newsletter - issue 42.

Overture is the largest and most far-reaching PPC search engine, but its popularity has driven up the cost of advertising with the company. The beauty of bidding on keywords in Overture is that your web site will be listed not only on Overture, but also at Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, CNN.com, and InfoSpace, provided your bid is in the top three for a particular keyword. Other good, cheap PPC search engines worth exploring include Findwhat, 7Search, and Kanoodle.

Google Adwords is also an excellent option, though technically it's not really a pay-per-click search engine. Instead, it's a "pay-per-position" advertising model that is the only way to get listed on the first page of Google without fighting your way through the free listings. Google Adwords listings show up in colored boxes on the right-hand side of Google's free search results, giving you tons of great exposure.

With Google Adwords, you bid on keywords for placement; however, Google Adwords also lists ads by popularity (how many clicks they get). You may be paying for placement, but unless your link receives more click-throughs than your competition's links, your listing may not appear in the top spots of the search results.

Even if pay-per-click search engines are not so effective for a link exchange, a #1 position for couple of months under a low-cost keyword will worth a LOT to your site!

   Link Exchange Strategy #14 -- The Right Way To Do A Link Exchange

At least but not last, how we do link exchange? It is always good to strive to "natural" linking. But this won't apply if you have a new web site (unless it is god damn good!). This is where the art of internet marketing came.

There are two ways to start a link exchange campaign: manual and automatic.

A manual link exchange campaign is a tedious process, but on a long run it will pay-off big. Here's a simple step-by-step action plan:

- choose your main and secondary keywords/keyphrase;

- perform a search on Google, Yahoo, MSN for these words and watch to potential web sites partners;

- once you identify your partners, send them a personalize email and invite to link exchange with you (don't forget to insert in your letter all the benefits of such an action);

- if you receive a positive response, set all the details and close the deal;

- finally, track and verify once or twice a month if your partners still linking back.

The automatic linking campaign will save a lot of your time and efforts, but will also expose you to hidden traps. The most often mistake people makes is to automatically send out email proposals without a personalization function. This is not so good because you will easily reduce almost to zero your chances to obtain a partnership.

Another common error: send out emails to wrong email addresses. For example, due to s.p.a.m phenomenon, I have a "trap" email posted on my site. Imagine I receive dozens and dozens of link exchange proposals here... even without personalization. The results? I delete ALL of them, and most webmasters do the same.

The moral of this example? Do not email thousands of email proposals. Try to concentrate on what really worth: quality. A link back from a top partner in your industry worth at least ten times more than ten links from poor results web sites.

If you want to save your efforts, try to get some help from link exchange services. You can use Value Exchange (brilliant), Link Market (excellent), Link Partners (very good). These services will find potential partners based on the information you provide and, some of them, will email a personalized email to your potential partners.

   Link Exchange Strategy Bonus -- How To Improve Your Internet Profits

This is the final tip I will reveal in this issue. In order to improve your SERP's, there still a big step you should make. Actually, if you want to play a roll on the search engines, make it to be the first one. In my Internet Marketing Profits Center Article Syndicator I post couple of time ago an article called 12 Mistakes That Will Run You Definitely Out Of Business.

At that time I wrote:

"10. Deadly Web Site Sins

Your web site creates a first impression of you and your business to the world. It is an insane to have a great product/ service but a lousy web design...

Some important elements a good web sites must have: fast download time, correct spelling/ grammar, easy and logical internal navigation, good and useful content, workable links, browsers compatible, control of graphics and animation, contact information, a good balance between graphic and text, use of the right colors and text fonts."

Before you start playing with search engine optimization, be sure you have the right internal link structure. I cannot empathize here how important is this to your visitors and SERP's! Google, Yahoo, MSN and other major search engines - ALL of them! - will give more weight and higher rankings IF keywords on the links, the origin and landing page are ALL closely related. Make sure you have INbound and OUTbound links coming and going to similar content!

It is highly recommend to check right now your internal (linking) structure from search engine optimization point of view. You can do it manually or using an amazing piece of software like OptiSpider developed by Leslie Rohde from WindRose Software.

I have only good words about OptiSpider, the single low-cost software to check an internal linking structure for better SERP's.

So what does it do? It spiders and analyzes your site at the click of a button. It counts keywords on every single page. Records the link text from every internal and external link. Calculates your term vectors for on and off page criteria like Reputation and Topic. And summarizes all inbound, outbound and offsite link counts...

You'll also get the Topic and Reputation match indicator. It's so easy to use... just match the colors. Red is bad. Green is good. You'll want to make sure your incoming links (Reputation) match the calculated term vector (Topic) of your pages. This software shows you exactly which pages or links on your site need improvement.

And finally, based on your internal linking structure, with a single mouse click, OptiSpider can build for you a site map. He writes the HTML to the system clipboard so you can paste into your favorite editing program... Download your copy of OptiSpider software from here!

Conclusions

Like it or not, link exchange it IS a part of search engine optimization and your daily web site promotion. You should devote a small part of your time to find powerful and relevant link exchange partners. Focus first on your internal linking structure and later increase the number of links from trusted external sites.

ALWAYS go to quality partners versus quantity. Your main goal is to make more internet profits by acquiring a higher Google PR which lead to more SERP's.

Once again I will said this: ALWAYS go after powerful and relevant link exchange partners. A link from such a partner not only will improve your search engine results but will always drive more targeted visitors to your web site.

And more visitors is equal to more profits. Keep this on your mind when you settle down a link exchange partnership. The era of big on-site link "directories" with hundreds of links and dozens of categories is about to fall down (do not believe me? Read the next article!).

Now it's the best time for you to change your link exchange mentality... focus on sites that will lead to more customers, aka more profits! If you read my article, you are armed with all the information about this subject. Nothing is left back... And remember:

Google was on a tear this month, undergoing a significant rewrite of its search engine listings in what may have been the longest rolling update we've seen ever! One particularly interesting development relates to the so-called Google Sandbox effect.

The Google Sandbox describes a seemingly consistent phenomenon where it often takes anywhere from six months to a year (sometimes longer) before a new site is allowed to rank well for competitive terms in Google. Some may debate as to whether the Sandbox truly exists, but the difficulty for new sites to rank well in competitive keyword searches within Google is undeniable.

Speculation is that Google puts a filter on the age of a site for certain highly competitive phrases. This initial ranking slowdown may help to put the kibosh on a site's early attempts to manipulate their rankings upward via strategies like purchasing links from high PageRank sites.

Google appears to be thinking that impatient webmasters who don't see an immediate reward for their optimization efforts may just decide to abandon them altogether. Of course, giving up is exactly what Google would want them to do.

Whatever the reason for the Sandbox effect, this last update saw the release of several long-Sandboxed sites, including a few of our own. Could it be that Google's improved ability to detect many popular link-spamming techniques has rendered the Sandbox unnecessary?

If you find that your site is being effected by the Google Sandbox, the best approach we've found is to just ignore it. There's very little that you can do to prevent the Sandbox effect. Our advice is that you just keep building links, adding content, and optimizing your site as you would normally. Sooner or later you'll emerge from the Sandbox and will have already laid the foundation for a high ranking site. That is precisely what we've seen take place with our own test pages.

You'd be wise to avoid stagnant pages, stale sites...

We've also seen a new issue arise in which Google seems to be dropping some sites that have not been updated or acquired any new inbound links for a year or more. Could this be a new strategy by Google to reduce the number of stale sites in their index? ...or is it just a coincidence we've run across? We're not yet sure.

In any case, it's certainly something to watch for - especially if you have sites sitting around that haven't been updated for awhile. It certainly wouldn't hurt to add or move around some links just to be on the safe side.

By no means have we seen this happen to all stale sites - just enough to make us wonder if something's going on. Be sure to bear this in mind before you make any drastic changes.

The BIG story is...

By far the biggest story regarding Google's latest update is that several pages which previously enjoyed first page ranking in Google took a big hit this past month. If this is news to you, then consider yourself one of the lucky ones.

You've been spared - many were not so fortunate. You see, this was not just any ole update. This update ushered in a significant modification of Google's ranking algorithm. Which brings us to our next big story...

Google continues their anti-link-spamming crusade with a major new algorithm update

Google is clearly cracking down on link-spamming in a big way. Hot on the heels of January's introduction of the nofollow tag (designed to thwart link-spamming within blog comments), it looks like Google has now adjusted their algorithm to better detect and neutralize several of the tell-tale strategies of traditional link-spamming, including:

• Too many links with identical link anchor text.
• Too many links all originating from the same domain (i.e., run of the site links).
• Too many links going to your homepage with few or none linking to your internal sub-pages.

It appears to us that Google is attempting to de-emphasize run-of-the-site links, all-identical anchor text links, and even reciprocal links to some degree. They may also be devaluing links from off-topic sites as well (though there is less evidence to support this assertion). In other words, if you sell hot tub supplies, but you have an incoming link from a financial services page, that link may be discounted due to the fact that financial services are "off-topic" for hot tub supplies.

By the way, we're not surprised. We've been warning for some time now that these changes were all but inevitable. This was advice that many ignored - perhaps due to the fact that the ole link-spamming tricks were working more quickly in many cases (and, by the way, continue to work in MSN and Yahoo - at least for the time being). However, it was clear to us that those tricks were on Google's hit list. And it was only a matter of time before Google figured out a way to detect and devalue them. It seems that day has arrived.

It's still a bit difficult to tell at this early stage in the game, but all preliminary data we're seeing boils down to one simple idea - Google has gotten better at recognizing artificial link structures. And smart search engine marketers will adapt their online strategies accordingly.

Sites that followed the above guidelines - including all the sites we manage (save for a few test sites) - were totally unaffected by this latest update. In fact, if we had only been focusing on our own commercial sites this month and not testing and monitoring the rankings for several high profile keywords, we might not have even noticed there was an update at all. That's how focused Google's algorithm update appears to be on clearing out what they view as link-spam.

Now, let's make one thing very clear. We are NOT advising you to dismantle your existing "artificial" link structures - chances are, that would be a huge mistake. This is especially true if you weren't effected by the most recent update. See it instead as a wake-up call in the event that you were thinking that Google would never get around to detecting and discounting artificial link structures, and as an incentive to begin focusing more on developing natural-looking incoming links. But otherwise, follow the rule, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Relief? ...overkill? ...a slight (maybe temporary) rollback?

After the initial onslaught left many sites decimated in the rankings, Google actually rolled back some of the changes. As a result of the rollback, some of the fallen sites have risen back to their previous status within the rankings. Perhaps Google felt they had overstepped their bounds? After all, many of the fallen weren't engaged in link-spam but got caught up in the sweep anyway. One thought is that maybe the algorithm update didn't go entirely as planned. In any case, it's clear that Google pulled back a bit from their initially aggressive dragnet.

Regardless, wide swaths of sites that formerly ranked on the first page of Google's search results based on aggressive link-building tactics now find themselves with a much lower ranking even for relatively unique search phrases like their own company or domain name.

Incidentally, Google has set up an email address dedicated to taking webmaster's comments about this latest update. Perhaps it's because they want to feel your pain - but it could also be an indication they are a wee-bit uncomfortable with the way the update turned out. You can register your views by going to feb05feedback@googlegroups.com.

3. Classified Ads

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4) "Tell Us What You Think!"

Dear friend, I would love to hear what you think of this issue of The Internet Marketing Profits^™ newsletter. And of course, if you have any suggestions for upcoming issues that you'd like to share with me, please send those, too -- just email me right away! And don't forget to check out the previous issues at the Internet Marketing Profits Newsletter Archive.

Warmest Regards,

Valeriu S. Popescu, Editor and Publisher
The Internet Marketing Profits^™ Newsletter

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DISCLAIMER: I urge you to exercise due diligence in responding to any advertisement or article posted here or in any other future issue. I do not give business or professional advice in this newsletter and therefore cannot be held responsible for results you get from responding to ads or articles in this newsletter. I urge you to exercise due diligence in all of your online dealings.