link building

Hi, great forum and my first post.

I have a site 3 years old with 50 backlinks. Many of my competitors have 1,000+ backlinks. In other words they are kicking my butt!

I want to start a link building campaign and take a shot at the big guys. If I link swap with 1000 + sites could this cause a problem with google?
Could i get a penalty for swapping links to my site?



thanks all
click22

You should put a link in your signature.......all links count!

Backlinks are not everything. Content and site optimization is the key. Backlink quality will out do backlink quantity. If you post your site, we can take a look. You may want to post some of these competitors also.

Somebody suggested me Zeus link building software. I have not tried my self. Hi Experts Your views?,

Although I'm not an expert on this field i would like to suggest you that don't buy these kinds of softwares. "Go for quality not quantity". Search for link partners on directories like Dmoz & major search engines with pr4+ (though it's a bit hard to get for newsites) instead using softwares like Zeus & Arelis........

ponpots,

what exactly is wrong with such software?

Shrek_Update

I have looked at Zeus and there are many things 'wrong' with it.

1. Does not look at the quality of link suggestions. Most are sites with PR-0 ... or high PR sites with affiliate and dealer lists.

2. Only looks for *themed sites* and ignores opportunities (like bartering for link position or banner exchanges).

3. Hogs PR into the directory index page and offers little PR to the reciprocal link. Particularly bad if set up incorrectly ... and most are set up badly!

4. Zeus doesn't have even a simple search function to help visitors find anything in the extensive directory structure.

5. Reduces the opportunity for chance hits on searches. How many times have you been sidetracked when a related site comes up?

Sorry --- I think sites with 1000's of reciprocal links is really a bad thing! What visitor is going to wade through page after page of website names?

I use following formula and that works for me...

Make Quality Website....Link to Quality Websites....And Quality Websites will link to your website.

Is there a negative effect from linking to a site with a low PR? Also is there a negative effect if a site with a low PR links to you? I have heard rumor on both of these and would like some professional opinions.

I ain't no pro ....

But here are some links to avoid on your site. Google hates link farms and WILL penalize pages linked to bad bad neighborhoods (negative PR?)

On the question of low PR sites ...I think there is a myth that PR-4 and above is all that Google counts.

I think every link found is COUNTED ... Google only SHOWS the higher pages in it's results.

Don't get me wrong! It only takes a few high PR pages to increase your rank. But, don't ignore the influence of a large number of low rank pages either.

I recommend always searching on your own for links. Do not use any sort of links software. Only humans can see quality and you do not need quantity to get high positioning.

I think I made my position clear in earlier posts...



I just don't like the idea that links must be PR-4 or better. This sort of puts new pages in a catch-22 ...

Maybe I should have said

"Low value links won't hurt YOUR page rank ... but it does reduce the value of your link to others (your vote is spread over all links on the page).

You have no control over links to you ... but you do gain PR by the value of THEIR link".