Three Fail Proof Linking Strategies for Google SEO

In 2006, many SEO experts agreed that Google put about 60% of it's emphasis of ranking any given web page on it's links. In 2007 that number shot up to between 70% and 75%. Now, in the latter half of 2008 up to 85% of your Google ranking depends on how it's linked. Or, more specifically, your success depends upon the quality and number of inbound links.

Google looks at everything from the "authority level" of the linked sites to their "PageRank" and even the IP class they use (Internet Protocol designation.) While we don't have hours to get into every little detail, I have provided three simple surefire ways to get hundreds of top rate inbound links to any page or your site you wish. And this is the absolute fastest way to get on top of Google and stay there for the long haul. So, here we go...

Google SEO Linking Strategy One: Hire a blog reviewer.

Hiring a blogging pro is a fast way of getting the links you want. Here's how it works... You are basically hiring a blog reviewer to chat up your Website. You set the tone of what is said and even give them acceptable working parameters to meet, such as the blog's traffic rating, type of blog and overall popularity.

You can hire independent people from services like eLance.com, Guru.com or RentaCoder.com or you can use a service that specializes in blog reviewers for hire, like http://www.PayPerPost.com. Personally, I like PayPerPost because it's their specialty and this is their "posties" livlihood, so they tend to do a great job. It's extremely reliable and great for social networking but considerably slower and ultimately more expensive than the following methods if your goal is simply link building.

Google SEO Linking Strategy Two: Use article marketing focused on your site's topic.

Offering free yet valuable content to the publishers, and ultimately readers, of blogs, newsletters and article directories is among the the fastest and most reliable ways to get high quality inbound links with minimal expense. But even more important to some is that if you share your expertise the right way, you will likely become a recognized expert in your field in no time.

People have filled entire books on the subject of article marketing so let me just hit the highlights here. This will be enough to get you started and help your name become trusted by both publishers and readers alike. Just remember these six simple guidelines...

1.) The article has to accomplish two things. First, it has to be 100% legitimate and not contain any inflated facts or sales pitches. And second it absolutely must present real value to the reader and the publisher. Don't ever write an article just for your own sake. A solely self serving article will be immediately transparent to the publisher and to most readers. Most people understand you want something in return for sharing your knowledge and are very happy to oblige a mutually beneficial arrangement, such as a great article for a link back in your bio.

2.) Obey the rules of where you are submitting your work. This is extremely important! Don't waste an editor or publisher's time. Be sure to select the best, and most descriptive category possible for your submission.

3.) You can (and in my opinion, should) write in a casual, conversational style but be careful to spell check the article and review it for clarity before submitting it. Once you have written something, especially something with your name attached to it, it will be a representation of you.

4.) Make the article the appropriate length for what you have to say. Don't drone on or cut it too short. Most article directories have guidelines about how long they like to see submissions. The same goes for newsletters. If you can't find this info for the directory you like, sticking between 500 and 1,000 words is usually a safe bet and usually up to 1,250 is OK. If you have more to say, consider splitting it into multiple articles that deal with one specific topic each.

5.) Be brief in your bio section. If your article is well written and contains similar words to the keywords you want to be found for, 350 characters (or about 40 words) should be more than enough to tell a little about yourself, your services with one or two relevant keywords properly placed. Just be sure to use those keywords as anchor text when linking to the page that covers that keyword's topic on your site. Many directories will let you have two links in the bio section and all allow at least one.

6.) And I saved the big one for last. Provide unique content to each article directory. No article or newsletter publisher wishes to have a bunch of duplicate content so carefully rephrase at least 30% to 35% of the article to make it unique. This will help both the publisher and the quality of your resulting inbound your links.

Big Tip: Writing dozens or even hundreds of article variations to eliminate duplicate content can take a great deal of time. Then manually submitting them to hundreds of directories takes even longer. A nice solution is using an article distribution service that allows you to enter slight variations to specific sections of your article and then combines them in unique ways to provide unique content for the search engines and readers. I am NOT talking about a system that creates robotic substitutions based on replacing similar words from a thesaurus. That produces junk. I'm talking about a system that allows you to submit your own text with alternate sentences or even whole paragraphs. This works amazingly well and can easily create over one thousand article variations based on about twenty extra minutes of your time when you submit your article. And of course, write as many variations of your bio as you can too.

One system that does a great job is available at http://www.SubmitYourArticle.us. They even review the article to ensure it is a good candidate for publication, which gives you advice from a professional editor for free. They do it to help protect their own reputation as well but the benefits to you are immeasurable.

Google SEO Linking Strategy Three: Use a three way linking system.

Google has discounted the use of straight reciprocal links to the point that many people feel they are not worth the time and effort to obtain. I still use them sparingly but I avoid reciprocal linking systems like the plague. Google hates them and they are so easy to detect that you might as well put a banner on your site saying "Hey Google, I use a link farm!"

Three way linking, however, is another story. Reciprocal linking is very easy to detect but 3 way links are altogether different. It works like this... Site 1 links to Site 2 and then Site 2 links to Site 3. And finally Site 3 links to Site 1, or even to another site in the chain. In short; every link is a true and verifiable one way inbound link.

If you are part of a group of similar sites, this is well worth doing. But if you need to build links quickly or don't have the time to set this up yourself, you can use a service like 3 Way Linker (http://www.3WayLinker.com). It's the ideal "set it and forget it" option and gives you full control over important aspects of linking.