Getting free traffic from the search engines is a great way to get both you and your book noticed, sell more books, and increase your online income. How do you do that?  Well, when someone types a word into their favorite search engine that is relevant to your book or your work, you have to show up in the top rankings.  No one will find you on page 20….. Achieving a high ranking in the search engines for relevant keywords will bring traffic to your website without costing you a penny.   

The important part is making sure that you don't try to get your website ranking for ultra-competitive terms – words that websites have held number 1 positions for with tons of “backlinks” (more on that later). It’s important to analyze the keywords which are relevant to your website/book/work, and choose ones where you have a good chance to achieve a high-ranking.  Usually these will be multiple word phrases rather than single word phrases. One of the ways in which you will get high-ranking for relevantkeyword phrases is by getting "backlinks" to your website.  

How do Backlinks Help with SEO? 

Google has declared 2007 as the year of the incoming link – high quality, one way links.  Now more than ever, it is important to create a long term site building presence that focuses on the community aspect of the World Wide Web. A backlink is a link which directs others towards your site. Theyare sometimes referred to as inbound links.  These are links that go from another website to your website. The number of backlinks that your site has is an indication of howpopular or important it is according to your peers (other siteowners). Backlinks are important for SEO, because search engines, such asGoogle, Yahoo, and MSN, will give more credit to those sites with a good number of quality backlinks.  So they will then consider these sites more relevant than others in the results pages of a search query. Most search engines will want websites to have a level playingfield, and so will more often than not look for natural links thathave been built slowly over time. Although it can be fairly easy to manipulate the links on a webpage in order to achieve a higher ranking, it is a lot harder toinfluence a search engine with external backlinks from anothersite.  This is why these feature so highly in a search engine'salgorithm. 

There are a number of ways in which you can get additionalbacklinks to your website. 

1. Reciprocal Linking.This is where you link to another site that provides the sameservice or product as you and they in turn have a link to your siteon theirs.  While very popular in the past, this exchange of links is not as valuable as one way links. 

2. Site Submissions.Submit links for your site to directories which allow freesubmissions, or if you can afford it, some paid directories.  Thereare many sites which offer a service where you can submit your site details to numerous sites.  Plus, if you want, you can alwayscreate your own directory of similar websites. 

3. Blogging.This has now become an integral part of the internet, and is one ofthe most effective ways of linking. You either have the choice of placing a few words of comments on to someone else's blog, or you may want to link to them from your own blog.  However, with so many people creating blogs and wanting to link to each other’s blogs, this can be extremely time consuming. 

4. Articles.This is another way of getting great backlinks. It is vital that any articles you write are on the subject, informative and thorough in relation to your site. Quality articles published on article sites are a great way ofgetting even more backlinks to your site. Always include a resource box at the end, as this will includethat all important backlink to your site.  This resource box shouldalso include a short biography regarding you and your site. 

5. Social BookmarkingThis is a way to record your favorite sites online at the varioussocial bookmarking sites, and that way the search engine spiderspick up your bookmarks and follow these backlinks to your websites. 

6. Creating Feeder SitesAdding a MySpace, or Squidoo page with links back to your website is extremely beneficial and expands your online presence at the same time. The above are just a few ways that you can get backlinks to yourwebsites to help them rank more highly in the search engines andhelp attract more traffic.  Using these techniques you should see an increase in the volume of traffic arriving at your website. The important thing is to take ACTION today.  Things are getting more and more competitive every day with thousands of websites coming online every day.  If you want to succeed online (and everyone needs to be online), you’ll want to get started NOW. Don’t want to become an SEO person?  Do you just want to concentrate on what you do best – be an author?   You’ve come to the write – I mean, right – place.  We have programs in place that can accomplish all of these things for you!  Maintaining a virtual relationship with your fans takes hours, hours.  Let our experts take care of that while you create and write new characters and books. 

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