"Should I respond to that emailed request from some website owner to put a link to his site on mine, in exchange for a link back?" The answer is "almost certainly not". But that doesn't mean that "reciprocal" links are a bad thing. Let us explain.

There are two reasons to get links: the traffic they generate directly, and the incremental boost they give you in the search engine rankings. Now, the amount of boost each one gives you in the search engines is related to the "quality" of t...

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I recently found this post on the internet and it is really valid and true advice. Its well worth a read. It was posted by Pete Caputa on this site.


A while ago, I wrote an article about link building. It is one of the most read articles on our blog.

It explains how to do link building the right way and provides a path for newbies to get started and progress to master link builders, the right way. The way that Google wants you to build links--by attracting and earning them. 

Even though this...
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A common scenario in industry is for the sales manager to stick his head around the marketing manager's door and say "Now that we've got the Red Widget 2, I'd like all references to the original Red Widget removed from the website", which leads to the marketing manager doing just that, by deleting the relevant pages.

This is a mistake for so many reasons. Never just delete pages.

Firstly, you'd managed to get your original Red Widget page onto the first page of the Google results for "red wi...

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I’ve been playing with a tool called Linkscape a lot recently; although it costs money, it provides some fascinating insights into your website, and it’s the sort of tool which is essential if you’re undertaking any “search engine optimisation” (aka “get my site ranking better in Google!”) programme. One of my favourite reports from this tool is a list of the Top Pages on a Domain, i.e the ones which probably carry the most clout with the search engines.

Why do you need to know...

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