If you’re a blogger (or a blog reader), you’re painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites’ search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.” This is called comment spam, we don’t like it either, and we’ve been testing a new tag that blocks it. From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

Let’s take a look

Locate the edit-link-form.php stored in your wp-admin folder. Download it and open it in a text editor. Locate the following code: <th scope=”row”> <?php _e(’friendship’) ?> </th>, under this code you will see <td></td> tags, roughly on line 123 or so. See the image below. Where you see the pink rectangle, you will be adding the following code:

<label for=”nofollow”>
<input class=”valinp” type=”radio” name=”friendship” value=”nofollow” id=”nofollow” <?php xfn_check(’friendship’, ‘nofollow’, ‘radio’); ?> /> <?php _e(’nofollow’) ?>
</label>

Once you have added the new lines of code to the edit-link-form.php file, save it and upload it replacing the old file.

Navigate yourself (more…)

Directory Submitter is some fantastic software, which submits your website to directories.

• Quickly submit your website to tons of directories
• Instantly get quality, 1 way links, in as little as 1 mouse click
• Submit an unlimited number of websites
• Add unlimited anchor text and description variations
• Easy to add new features

This software is great for increasing your search engine rankings, and in term increasing your targetted traffic.

From the point of view with regards to making money online, Directory Submitter has an affiliate system, which pays out 75% commission per sale. The link to read more about being an affiliate is viewable by clicking here. In order to download this great software, give this link a click.

I’m off to try it out!

When looking into relationships between websites, there are three types of links.

One-way incoming links

Also known as ‘inbound link’ are links leading in to your site from other sites. Incoming links are the best types of link to get, from a marketing point of view, since they’re offering you something for nothing in the form of free traffic and a boost in the search engines! Sites with a large number of relevant, on-topic incoming links are sometimes referred to as hub sites.

One-way outgoing links

Also known as ‘outbound links’ are links on your own site which connect to other sites i.e. links that will lead your visitors away from your own site. From a marketing perspective, outgoing links may be considered the weakest type of link as you are effectively giving away your traffic. On the other hand, if your site is very useful, your visitors may well come back again - and they will appreciate your site even more for its willingness to point them to other relevant resources. Sites with a lot of on-topic outgoing links are sometimes referred to as authority sites.

Two-way reciprocal links

These are circular link relationships, i.e. your site links out to a 3rd party site, and that site links back to yours. The links might be homepage to homepage, linkpage to homepage or linkpage to linkpage, depending on the arrangement, but they’re essentially a link swap. Reciprocal links can be beneficial when you’re trying to market your site, especially if they are set up between complementary sites, but their value is dropping as the search engines tend to discount such "mutual admiration" relationships.

Use a keyword in your anchor text

When creating a link, make sure you use your keywords in your hyperlink. For example, I am running a competition on Crush Calculator, where you stand a chance to win an Apple iPod Touch. As you can see, I have included the exact words I want associated with my competition. This tactic will influence your rankings in search engines relative to the searching of these key words.

Link from relevant pages

When linking to a website, if the link containing page is relevant to the destination website, the ranking will be treated better than a link which points to an irrelevant website. It makes sense though and shows just how intelligent these search engines are!

Link to relevant pages on your site.

Having incoming to your website is great an all, but having links from external sites pointing to relevant pages on your site will increase your rankings. If the link text is "win an Apple iPod Touch " then you should make sure that the link goes to a page that has the competition. If the link text matches the content of the linked pages then it’s more likely that your website is really relevant to that term and it’s more likely that you’ll get high rankings for that search term. This is not the only benefit, this will also increase your users visiting pleasure.

It’s good if the link is from an authority site

Technorati gives websites authority ratings and having links coming from websites with high authorities will benefit your page rank. So having thousands of links from very low authority websites will not jump your page rank up a lot, rather take your time to get a link back from a website with a high authority.

The link must not have a nofollow attribute

The new attribute is called "nofollow" with rel="nofollow" being the format inserted within an anchor tag. When added to any link, it will serve as a flag that the link has not been explicitly approved by the site owner. This seems to be the next big thing circulating the Internet. You can read more here.