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.

Search engine submitting is really important when it comes to increasing your traffic. Most of us have tried using software to submit to multiple search engines, but as I have found out, and most probably you too, these applications don’t work correctly, and just end up with added spam in your inbox. This being said, I have made a list below of some free submission websites, which take a few minutes to do, and they do work! Note that a couple of these are free submit websites, whereas the others are not as quick and simple. Start with the free submit ones, and enjoy some quick and simple search engine rankings..

Google & Netscape Search
Free Submit: http://www.google.com/addurl/

Yahoo! & Fast Search & Altavista
Free Submit: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request/

MSN Live Search
Free Submit: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

AOL Search
Submit: http://www.aol.com/netfind/

Gigablast
Free Submit: http://www.gigablast.com/addurl

Good luck, and look out for some extra traffic to your blog soon!

As a blogger, running a blog about making money online, I need to prove myself, in order to achieve trust from my visitors and hopefully convert them into regulars, who believe in my articles. That is basically a short summary as to what any blogger aims to achieve - user loyalty!

There are a number of ways to achieve user loyalty; I shall just mention two ways below though:

• Proof of earnings - people want to see that I have earned money, ie. not all talk. If you see that someone is practicing what they are preaching, and turning results, then it’s obviously a good idea to read on, if not, what is the point? Take a look at my proof is in the pudding post, to see what I am talking about.
• Recognition - Being noticed and spoken about increase reader loyalty: "If others are interested, then so should I" - This ties up with many of my posts, where I talk about people being like sheep, and following the heard.

Bullet one above, is very much self explanatory, click the link, and see how I turned a 5 digit income in a month. Bullet two, however, is a lot harder to achieve, and often nearly impossible to show, but today I have a great example, which actually features this exactly..

About a week ago, I was interviewed by a fantastic journalist from the Campus Financial Mail. He found my website via one of the popular search engines, and at the time, he was writing an article about South African Web Entrepreneurs, who were making a success using the Internet as their tool. This morning, I logged into my mail account, and to my delight, I saw that the article had been published both on their website, and in the printed edition of the Campus Financial Mail. Above, is an extract from the brilliantly written article on South African Web Entrepreneurs. If you are not a subscriber, you can download the article, by clicking this link.

I cannot stress how important these two points are, if you can achieve these, you will see a huge increase in traffic, as well as an even bigger increase in recognition - basically a snow ball effect.

Thanks to everyone who visits this site, I do hope that you gain from reading my articles!