Simply go to Google, Yahoo or MSN. You can start with any of them, it doesn’t matter which one and you’ll want to use all three eventually as well as some of the smaller search engines. Once there put this exact search in the search box:

“This reciprocal links directory is easily” (your main keyword or phrase)

So for a site that sells golf clubs, the search would be… “This reciprocal links directory is easily” golf clubs

Make sure you have the quotes (”) in the search. All RLM sites have the words “This reciprocal links directory is easily” somewhere on the links page. So you are searching for is pages that use Reciprocal Links Manager software and have a category for your keyword(s).

If you enter the search correctly, for most keywords you’ll have a list of hundreds of potential link partners that have a category themed towards your market. And most provide their HTML link code right on the “add your URL�? page. Cut and paste to add their link, then fill out the submission form and move on to the next site. I’ve been able to make 25-30 link exchange requests an hour using this method and that was being selective. Once you get to the point that the site quality starts dropping switch search engines and repeat.

Make sure you actually click around the site a bit to make sure it’s a site you’d want to exchange links with. And beware of the now popular practice of sites putting their links pages on subdomains. Those pages might pass PR, but they have little to no authority or trust rank. Remember linking isn’t just about Page Rank.

There are basically 3 ways to distribute your articles. First you can bulk submit the article to websites that allow people to “publish�? articles which in theory serve as a resource for webmasters looking for “expert�? content to add to their own websites. The truth is that almost all of these sites are nothing more than free for all pages that the website owner puts pay per click ads on. Some of these sites are more than 10,000 pages. If you publish an article on one of these sites there is little to no chance a legit webmaster will find your article and place it on his/her site. So you are basically just getting the link back from the site you submitted the article to in the first place and that’s only if the search engine actually finds your article and even then it will have almost no value. The only advantage to this type of article posting is that there are hundreds of these article content sites and you can either buy software that automatically submits your articles or hire someone to do it for you. I recently tried this with a guy that submitted two articles to 180 sites for me for $30. It’s been 10 days and I’m showing 68 links to my site total from the articles. Some of the article sites are slower to post so I expect at least another 30-40 to be added over time. So are 100 very poor quality one-way links to your site worth $30? Perhaps, it all depends on where you are in the growth of your site and in what market your sites focuses. If you decide to use this method more than once to promote a site, make sure that you switch up the target of the links to internal pages on your site when submitted a second time. It will give more value than multiple home page links coming from the same site.

The second method of promoting your site by distributing articles is to submit an article to a more respected source like Ezine Articles. Many webmasters use these more respect article publishing sites as a resource for related content. The trick here is to make sure you submit a quality article. For the first method a 400 word keyword rich article is fine, but with Ezine Articles you’ll want to submit something over 600 words that provides a real opinion on your topic. I’ve had articles picked up from Ezine that ended up on PR4 pages of respected related websites. That’s not a bad deal at all.

The third and by far best method is to get a unique article posted on one related website. This can be tricky. You might have to trade the other site by posting an article of theirs on your site, pay the other site or if all else fails just beg. This article should not appear anywhere else on the web, not even your own site. Also, this article should be of the highest quality you can deliver. You will actually get visitors to your site from these articles if they are good and those visitors will already consider your site an authority. My conversion rate on visitors coming from a link in this type of article is four times my normal conversion rate. That’s powerful indeed.

So where does that leave us? Which method should you use? My answer to that question is: All of the above. Different search engines like different kinds of links. The large number low quality links might help with one search engine and the low number high quality links might help with another. I’m all about a broad based approach. As always, it’s your job to monitor the return you get based on the money you spend and time it takes you. That’s how to determine which method is best suited to your needs.

I hired four different services for a minimum of 100 submissions and maximum of 300 submission 10 days ago. So far all four have produced similar results.

-10-12% sent a notice of the request being rejected for various reasons.
-33-37% have not listed my test site yet (some have long wait times).
-51-57% have posted a link to my test site.

Of the sites that accepted my link easily 65% are basically worthless links as the directory has no PR and often the pages aren’t even indexed or the directory has literally thousands of links and my link ended up buried. So that leaves less than 20% of the original directories giving me a decent link.

That might not sound too successful, but consider a few things:

Price: It’s just plain cheap. One service directory submission service submitted to 300 directories for $30. Even at 15% return that’s around 66 cents a link. And some of the links are on PR2 or even PR3 pages with as few as 5 other outbound links.

Time: It took me maybe 10 minutes to sign up, input my test site’s data and pay.

Future development: It’s only been 10 days. Some of the sites that have not accepted me yet will end up posting my link. Also, some of the directories that are not indexed yet will continue to grow. In a year I could see half of these directories listing my link on indexed pages. So for the 300 for $30 deal that’s 20 cents a link for links on themed indexed pages.

The down side is that I expect very few visitors from these links, you can’t always get a properly themed category, and most of the sites will be dealing almost zero trust rank. But overall when it comes to directory submission to free directories, it’s a deal I’ll take with a smile.

First of all, check and recheck the basics. For example, right now someone in your market is experimenting with new title tags, maybe it working. It’s a great feeling when you notice your competition jump in the SERPs and you already know why they did it. Your competition is your best resource of onsite SEO information. Let them A/B test for a month and then make a change, only to see you match it in days.

Secondly, make sure you have a landing page for every related keyword phrase. I know this is somewhat basic, but new search phrases are popping up all the time in most markets. Sure blue widgets might get searched 10k times a day and faded blue widgets only 500 times a day but that’s 500 potential customers. Write an article or a review or whatever, but make sure there’s a landing page for every phrase that a potential customer might type in the search bar.

Thirdly, think and rethink your internal linking. You have total control of your onsite links. This is your most powerful tool. Not only can you move page rank but you can define product pages in any manner you wish. Each page of your website has a job to do, make sure each is doing its job with maximum efficiency.

Well that’s three example of onsite SEO that you might be ignoring, there are many more. The moral of the story is that you are never done. The idea that you build a site and then promote it is for page 3 sites. If you want to get to the top of the SERPs for any keywords that matter you’ve got to constantly look for improvements and onsite SEO is the only SEO that you have total control over.

Over the past few years there has been extreme growth in the number of general directories. I’m betting that niche directories take over for the next few years. My wife built such a niche directory recently and it just missed the PR update by about a week. That week may well have cost us hundreds if not thousands of dollars between now and the next PR update. If you are a link buyer get the niche links before the rush. If you are a website developer niche directories may well be a nice cash cow for the next few years.

So far the results look pre-alpha but the scope of this project is massive. This puts Google in direct competition with EBay, Monster.com, and just about every newspaper in world among others. And as has been the model for Google already with G-mail, Analytics, and others, the service is free for now.

Half of me wants to go into a rant about Google becoming Big Brother, the other half is cursing for not having bought more Google stock at $85 a share. However you look at it, Google is making some Rockefeller type moves right now.

“You should see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index. This update will be complete by tomorrow (Monday) morning.�?

My main site made a big jump in this update, moving from 20th to 5th for my main keyword phrase as well as some nice improvements on many secondary search terms. I am knocking on wood as I type this, as morning is not quite here yet.

This is the second Yahoo update in the last couple weeks and they’ve come and gone with barely a whisper. The whole of the internet world seems to be focused on the so called Jagger update that Google is still dragging out. The SERPs have changed more on Yahoo over that time period than Google in the markets I follow and yet webmasters and SEOs are fixated on Google datacenter watching. This more than any search engine market share stats should tell you how strong Google really is.

Google analytics states that it will tell you, “everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You’ll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors.�? And to top it off the service is totally free. This is a service for which Urchin charged $200 a month.

Does this seem too good to be true? I must admit my first response was extreme reservations about allowing Google access to that much data about my website. I have nothing to hide but let’s face it; my job is to fool the search engines. Why give them access to so much traffic information?

But then I told my wife about the service Google was offering for free and expressed my logical distrust of the company trying to corner the market on the world’s information. She promptly let me know that the tin foil was in the second drawer down to the left of sink in the kitchen if I wanted to go ahead and make my hat.

I’m currently paying $99 a month for analytics that do not match what Google now offers for free. I am tempted, but I haven’t signed up yet.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ken in Atlanta at a conference. He was a charming man with a childlike enthusiasm for SEM and SEO. Ken was always convinced that there was a more efficient and effective method just beyond his grasp. He pursued the improved method with joy and vigor. The knowledge that he shared over the course of that weekend stunned me. Not only that one man could have such a unique and effective method, but that he shared that information freely with a smile on his face. As the rest of us, with jaws hanging open, tried to digest the secrets he was revealing, Ken kept rolling out more information seemingly in an attempt to trump himself. There was no one else left to trump.

Ken lived his life by his own rules and truly did beat the system. He will be greatly missed.