Thursday, February 24, 2011

How Do Search Engine Robots Work

We are always in the hurry to get higher positions on the search engine result pages (SERPs) and better page rank for our web pages. But do we really mind how our sites are ranked or indexed? What is the method or the process behind? Do we care for search engine robots that work behind the results and the ranking of our site?

It is not that people SEOs or the webmasters are ignorant of work procedure of search engine robots. But the intention is here to put forth a few points that can clarify and say how robots work; rather how those typically programmed applications are the deciding factors for success of your websites. At the same time neglecting their working procedure can be effective for us. Let us know in simple terms the work procedure of the search engine robots:
  • First we either have to submit our sites to the search engines or build up relation with our business related sites which will put our links in their sites. Either of the process or the both are the invitations to the search engine robot to visit our site.
  • The search engine robots regularly wander throughout the millions of the web pages in the World Wide Web. Finding the new submission or the links through other sites, they start crawling websites and collect information.
  • Before gathering information they search engine robots find robot.txt file which is an instruction for them about which pages to crawl and which are restricted. If the file is not available or wrongly commented about the restricted pages, site remains without crawl or any confidential page may get to public.
  • Search engine robots visit from one link to other in web pages of a site. If pages are far from the main page or home page, or any link is broken, collection process is stopped or avoided. This is a reason for orphan page never comes in search result. Site map helps robots nicely.
  • Sometimes we find images are not crawled and not found in the image search. This is also for misguidance to search engine robots. This results for the wrong image tags, path is not properly keyword-rich or alt tag is missing, the crawlers cannot fetch the data properly and the images may not come in the image search.
  • It is found that search engine robots are not indexing a website. There may be simple reasons. In the sites there may be flash, JavaScript or faulty HTML coding that are preventing the robots to crawl the pages. So it is better to put the JavaScript files below the page so that robots read the entire essential files first then come to JavaScript.
  • Fetching the information from any page, robots submit those to search engine databases. Then some special algorithm is applied (varies for different engines) and results are shown for the pages.
  • Many times we see our new updates are not available in the search results page. This is because robots visit as per scheduled by the engines. If for huge traffic or technical fault sites go down (may be bandwidth exceeds), robots visit later and we get update later.
These were the simple yet nice processes through which search engine robots work and we get our sites coming properly in the good positions of the SERPs. Finally we can say - it is important that robots come regularly to visit our sites. On the basis of their collected information search engines rank our sites matching with their particular algorithm. If robots do not find our optimizations efforts (both on-page and off-page) or stop visits, our entire endeavor goes in vain. Even the site may vanish from SERPs.

Finally we may say that we run behind better position in the search engine results page. We optimize our sites to get attention of the search engines, but do we clearly keep the idea how search engines index our pages? Search engine robots are the messenger of the search engines about our web pages. Clear conception about the work of the robot help us in getting better results. So whether you are offering the search engine optimization work to a web design company that develops the websites or to a specialist SEO do not hesitate to ask if they have the proper knowledge on how the search engine robots work! Without this knowledge no SEO effort will be successful!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Top 10 web development software

Today it is doubtless that the online presence is a must for every business. And for better presence websites are the best ploy to rely upon. Every one of us knows how effective the websites are! But it is similarly true that the websites need to be developed carefully, perfectly and fast. And we must thank the web developers who do this work very well.

However here we are trying to find out the top 10 web development software that gives ease of development. Though it is very difficult to really pass the judgment– which is the top 10 software, we may have a look on the top 10 software being used by the developers to make things easy:

  1. Mockingbird: Today everybody is in hurry. When we ask the web developers to show mockups, we do not think twice on how much time they should get to prepare the best and exact mockups according to our instructions! We simply want to get those mockups fast to see if developers can implement the things that have been instructed by us. But does it mean that web developers could not produce for us the best of mockups? No! Developers have a little and very useful software “mockupbird”. Simply user interface elements can be dragged and dropped, rearranged and resized to create a perfectly balanced mockup webpage with this software. Even multiple pages can be created to show the clients navigations of a site. These mockups can be shared or embed in any webpage to show the clients.

  2. Doc-to-Net: Many a time for development purposes there is less time in hand to transform the scanned images from any kind of documents in the proper format. To solve this situation there is an innovative CGI application which can transforms TIFF image to a PNG, GIF or JPEG, "on the fly" and even those can be streamed through the browser without downloading any external plug-ins. And interestingly with this useful software images can be zoomed, paned, scrolled and rotated as per the viewing purposes. The developers save great amount of time in incorporating the images in any module without taking the work to the designers separately.

  3. Bespin: It is one of the best browser based code editor. Again for quick editing purposes developers can not effort to go for time consuming desktop based editors! With standard editing features, it offers highlighting of syntax, support for large files sizing and direct preview of files in browsers. Bespin not only gives you access to entire coding environment through a computer; it helps firewall configuration. Even developers get opportunity to add various plug-ins with Bespin to prepare the perfect timesaving editor.

  4. Dropbox: When the project is small and limited then there is no problem in file sharing among the developers. But the moment a project is very large and involves quite a few developers or for the offshore development purposes the boundary of development field may be world wide. Here comes the use of the Dropbox software created as an online storage and sharing files between many computers or development team members. After installation a Dropbox folder appears on your computer’s desktop where files can be dragged and automatically that file appears in the Dropbox folder on each one of your computers, laptops and even smartphones within network. Does not it save time? What is another great feature of this software is automatic addition of all the files dragged in the Dropbox folder on the Dropbox website. And the files can be accessed from any computer in the world. So wherever the developers go they can use the files in no time.

  5. XenoCode Browser Sandbox: When the question is of browser testing developers get little frustrated. The broken alignments or other faults in Internet Explorer 6 simply irritate the developers. And the prime difficulty is of not having all the browsers in a computer! Here is the use of XenoCode Browser Sandbox which is nothing but a series of applications that runs almost all popular browsers all together. Most interestingly this software does not even require the installation; XenoCode’s Browser Sandbox can be used online to get the most perfect result.

  6. Net2ftp: There occurs some situation when for quick file transfer purposes FTP client servers are in quick need. Here comes the use of Net2ftp. It is a free, easily available web based FTP client server that features all the necessary and standard FTP functions developers expect. It has quick and fast ability to extract files, directories and download a selected file group or directories as an archive. Developers get numerous plug-ins to enhance performance of this software. It can easily be integrated with Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, XOOPS and almost all other open source Content Management Systems.

  7. W3C Markup Validation Service: For completion of the developments, developers and the designers simultaneously need to validate the markups. There is always need to check the syntax of Web documents, written in formats such as HTML, XHTML etc. To resolve the problem of validation there are many a validation software but the one developed by W3C is the best. This Validator shows the coding problems clearly. The HTML documents are tested against defined syntax of HTML and marks all the discrepancies. The developers comparatively save time than using other such software services.

  8. PackageForTheWeb: There are many a time situations when there is less time to wrap applications set up into internet ready packages for using in website building purposes. In this regard the developers take the help of this software. With this visual development utility creating and extracting executable files has got very easy. Putting any installation on the web has got simply easy and time saving with PackageForTheWeb. It has been designed to work with most of the InstallShield authoring tools.

  9. FavIcon Generator: Some times web developers need to create the web pages by themselves automatically without the help of the designers. They can do with programming and following the style and structure of the designs. But generating the quick and easy favicons for websites is not that much easy for sure. Here helps the FavIcon Generator! This software can effortlessly create favicons with simple selection of any image in gif, jpg, png, or bmp format. Every eye-catching favicon help websites stand out identical in users’ eyes.

  10. Internet Professional (iPRO): This is a featured collection of Visual Component Library based software that provides the web developers great internet connectivity for any 32-bit applications. Anytime in need developers can send e-mails and access internet newsgroups, transfer files, HTTP, browsing HTML files, and sending Instant Messages through this software. In other words Internet Professional brings to the developers everything they need altogether very easily.

This is however my list of the top 10 web development software generally used by the web developers for the convenience of their development. The list can vary from person to person but we have tried to present the most popular 10 software out those. Whatever we have tried to put forward here is on the basis of the popularity of the software to the developers. And we hope with little research you yourself can find out the popularity of the software we have mentioned above. Anyways, hope we are successful to present to you the software that may come in your help, when you are a developer or you are asking other developers to get you fast development. Do not forget to ask them, if they take the help of the above software or other ones I missed to mention.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Google page ranks - is it loosing its relevance

Whatever business you have, can you deny that one of your business goals is to get a high Google page ranks? In other words every one of us tries to get our site on top in Google search. Because we know that there are many other search engines on the internet but the major market share is captured by Google! So it is natural that visitors and the community of businessmen eye on the Google page ranks of sites. With page rank (PR) there lies the point of faith in users’ mind, importance of sites being eligible for link exchange, point of having spam free attitude and lots of things! But nowadays people say that there is no importance of Google PR – it is only fine to have good position in search engine results page (SERP).

Let us now discuss the matter of relevancy of Google PR with some very simple aspects of it. It is not that as a common business owner you have to care about the PR, even if you are having a web design company or in plain word your site is for providing website building services, hopefully these points will make you understand how important Google page ranks is for any kind of website.

  • The link exchange process has great importance in getting the Google page rank. Do you think the link exchange process has stopped? On the other hand the link exchange is done on the basis of higher page rank of any webpage. Google values a site for having quality and relevant links. So there is no question that site owners ignore the Google page ranks.
  • No web page can get higher Google page ranks if it is spreading spam or virus for sure. Google has its own techniques to avoid providing rank to web pages that has malicious intention. So when a web page has good page rank, it is sure that it does not contain such things.
  • Google page ranks let everybody understand the newbie in the market. When a site is launched, the home page gets “no rank” from Google. And this situation continues for quite a few days for sure. So easily a viewer or the business can understand the new comers in the market. So the sites that get no rank, try hard to get at least “0” page rank to gain confidence among the business community and visitors.
  • Google page ranks help in understanding the relevancy and correctness of its strategy for growth. To get better page rank all the site owners do many a lot of things. And among those things search engine optimization (SEO) is one. If a site is doing proper optimization then the pages of the site is bound to get better ranks. Isn’t it a deciding factor if a site is having good strategy of growth?

So what idea have you got from the above points? Is it not clear that Google page ranks have greater importance in success of a website? What is here to remember is nothing but the interconnection of several factors that determine the greater SERP and PR of a site (though PR is shown for the individual page). In simple words people who say that SERP is everything and PR has no importance or those who tend to get only high PR are all led by misconception! Google decides both PR and SERP on the mutual relation of the two. At the same time it does matter if any website is trying to take some malicious ploy to get better result in these two fields. Finally we should conclude the things saying Google page ranks have its importance but never try any wrong process to get better result.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Is your website sandboxed by Google

Google sandbox – what is it all about!

Website owners and the search engine optimizers doubt and get frightened – "Will my site go in the Google sandbox?" How to avoid sandbox? Will the investment of time and money go in sea…

Anyways there is almost nothing like "Google sandbox" – at least Google has not accepted the existence of such system. But there is something for sure that comes in count for websites. What is that? Is it a “prison” for mischief-making existing websites or "resting place" for the “newcomers” in the “game village” of world wide race of getting the first position in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) - "Google sponsored" marathon run!

May it be the new sites or the older ones, Google do not spare any site that either hurries to get better result in Google search or start spamming or misleading Google. We may see the things in little details:

Some say it is a resting place for the new comers!

It is not to mention that the Google database is just huge! Google has to update it’s database regularly maintain search index, cache and other factors that determine the SERP and page rank. It is evident that all the sites want to get better SERP and page rank as fast as those can. But it is not possible to give priority to the newcomers always, just avoiding the older ones or the existing sites.

And here is the factor that comes for the newcomers (new websites) as resting or waiting to get in the SERP. This situation is considered as the Google sandbox time for the new sites.

Why it is applicable to new comers?

It is found that the new sites are too much eager to get at the top of the SERP and to get that position those are ready to go any extent. They just hurry up in exchanging the links, go on changing the contents and try some black-hat techniques even. For this reason Google has to put a question mark on the reliability of the sites to come in proper SERP.

Goggle simply keeps waiting to prove or judge the trustworthiness of the sites. Consequently new sites remain far behind or not present in the SERP for quite a few long days. Those sites have to prove that they are not playing tricks to effect adversely to the proper process of Google search engine indexing, crawling and caching.

The new site owners should know that from the genuine links (present in several same category sites) Google find the newer sties and index those. After the crawling is done, it keeps a cache copy in its database. Here does not complete the process, several other factors comes to help getting the site better position in SERP.

So for the new websites, Google sandbox is a resting place to prove the genuinely and worth to plunge in the race of page rank, SERP and all. It is simply the fitness test that every player has to pass. However as I said in the beginning Google never accepts the existence of such situations (sandbox).  

No, Google sandbox is penalty

Some SEO experts claim that the sites that do not follow the white and clean process of getting the SERP, page rank are penalized by Google by confining it to what we know as the “Google sandbox.” In other words the mischief makers are imprisoned or jailed by Google.

Why this penalty?

As I have already said before – everybody is in hurry to gain better SERP and page rank. They forget – there is no short cut to success. The new sties and even the older ones are found to exchange links with irrelevant sites, go on pirating the content of other sites, stuff content with keywords, and other black-hat process to misguide the Google.

So it is evident that Google takes the drastic steps to stop such kind of search engine spamming. And put these sites in sandbox. If the sites are quarantined in such ways, it becomes hard to come out of such situation for sure.

Now the big guns are going to be shot and bigger questions are coming in your mind regarding the Google sandbox...

How may I know that my site is in Google sandbox?

It is really tough to pin point the criteria against the Google sandboxing of a site. But it does not mean that you will never understand if your site is in sandbox. Let us have a look at few symptoms that can make you understand that your site is caught up in the Google sandbox:
  • A site is not coming in the search results though few months have passed. Whereas other sites in the same field or category is out ranking it with same search query.
  • The advanced searching or technical search with exact “Title” tag and “Meta” tag of your site is not showing any result.
  • Your site was showing gradual progress from the time it had been indexed, crawled and cached by Google but all in a sudden it is vanished or showing downward moves.
  • Your site is getting better search results in other search engines (Yahoo, Bing) result pages but in Google you are finding your site in drastic condition.
  • Last but not the least is the failure of all your SEO techniques to give your site a good position in Google.
The above are only the few symptoms that can notify that your site is under Google sandbox situations. There can be other issues through which you may know that the site is affected by sandbox. However you should not feel frightened to get your site falling under such conditions, if you are not involved with any mischievous activity to mislead the Google bot.

Anyways, you may be thinking deep inside the matter or few other questions may be running inside your brain. And you want to get answers of those questions. Let us have the answers of two main questions:

How to overcome - if my site is in Google Sandbox

No doubt it is one of the most shout after question when a site is affected for the sandbox. As there is no fixed time period for which a site is going to remain sandboxed, site owners and the SEOs should follow the points below to get out of the situation:
  • Actually to get out of the sandbox it is going to take little time. And the time is not going to increase if you and your SEO stop applying speed in optimization process. If you slow down the process and malpractices (if any), your site will gain the trust of Google and soon come out of sandbox. Though minimum time may be 2 to 3 months.
  • Stop the piracy of content and start pouring into your site the original and properly optimized content. As I said before that Google either doubt the use of keyword stuffed and duplicate content or avoid useless content. So you have to revive your site with most relevant content.
  • It may be the case that the keywords you have chosen are highly competitive or they are stuffed in content. Again there may be the case that the on-page tags (meta, title, alt etc.) are thoroughly mismatch. You have to correct these problems and you will find the ways out of the Google sandbox is getting open.
  • Start removing the useless links that you have developed for your site in the process of link exchange. The bad and irrelevant links may have resulted in sandboxing your site. So without any delay fix the situation and only keep the relevant links matching your sites category. Google needs to understand that you have left the wrong process or you never had such malicious intention.
In this way or through these simple techniques you can make Google understand that your intention is very clear. You want business from your site but in clean way. Gain the trust and get out of the Google sandbox.

Prevention is always better than cure: Avoid Google sandbox situation

Finally what I can say or you may find over internet with a little study that all the new sites do not fall in the Google sandbox. Only the fast and unsteady players lose the race. Simply saying again that “there is no shortcut to success”. It is fact that your site needs to come higher in the SERP of Google but not through malpractice or misleading process for search engines.

For your use and instant help I may only suggest a few points that will help you to keep out of the Google sandbox. Let us have a look on few of the points:
  • Try the search engine optimization but in slow and steady process. Never go fast. It attracts the attention of Google filter – sandbox is one of such filtering.
  • Start with less competitive keywords and use them properly in on-page optimization. Never stuff keywords. If you choose highly competitive keywords you will see slow growth result and increase of malicious techniques in your mind to get instant success.
  • Never pirate content. Whatever the situation use original content from the beginning of your site development and optimize those content with proper keyword density.
  • Exchange link with relevant sites only and try to get links from the higher ranked or older sites. This not only helps you gain good ranks and SERP, it also stops Google to think of sandboxing your site as you are trusted by the reputed sites.
  • Always keep your site up and running. Never let it remain too much down for any reason, never change content too much. Save it from spammers and make it for the user not for search engines. In everyway Google has to feel you are active for positively not for shortcut success.
The final touch!

Do not get frightened about the Google sandbox. If by any means your site is “jailed” or not “resting” for joining the race to get better SERP and page rank, you have to wait and stop doing any kind of nonsense to misguide Google. Gain trust from the search engine giant that you are genuine and clean in your intentions.

Always ask for good result from your search engine optimizers – never ask for fast result. Remember the old saying “slow and steady wins the race”- it is not my saying Google also follows this.

To know more about webmaster & SEO related information, you may visit or contact www.onlinewebdirectory.com

Secure your site with SSL

Are you letting hackers see their way clear to…?

These days internet has become heaven for hackers, is not it! I mean to say sometimes for our lack of little extra care to our online transactions, we find ourselves as losers of confidential and private data. Thank God! Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is there to protect our online data transfer.

Now, why this discussion? You have the full right to ask me so. My point is clear – are you someway drawing your back to the SSL certification? Are you full aware that SSL has become affordable and more secure? What? I am not a vendor of SSL certificates. My intention is to suggest you to secure your personal data from theft, even if your site is not an ecommerce website. Protect yourself and your sites’ visitors from data hackers.

Oh this Lock, where is the key?

This is no funny affair my dear reader! I am sure the hackers will certainly feel such disgraced to break the encrypted code that will protect your data from being theft. Once the visitors see the small ‘padlock’ icon or the colored ‘security favicon’ on the navigation bar of browser, they feel secure to provide their personal information. At the same time, it causes headache to hackers or phishers as they fail to break (at least 128 bit) of encrypted data. And yes, the third party, the certificate provider’s ‘security icon’ in the web pages enforces the guarantees for secure online data transfer.

My business is too small and not having any monetary transaction!

Certainly it is a serious statement that comes under consideration when people start to give a second thought to secure the site with SSL. Let’s have a quick count how to secure a site with SSL and why:
  • Does your site impart online business with money transaction? If yes, you need SSL. When people pay for any product or service, they use credit card, net banking and the like. If SSL encryption is not present, the personal data may be hacked on the fly.
  • If a site offers valuable information and it asks for login to secure users and itself, SSL is in need. There may be ‘user login’ to get some information from a site. To maintain the confidentiality of a user and secure use of data SSL encryption works.
  • In the process of any important data or database download, SSL security is high on demand. For various governments, corporate and even small private concern, online data transfer is done. To secure these data download SSL security has to be present.
  • Even for secure email services SSL encryption is must to maintain privacy. For web mail services protection of SSL is must to keep the email data and user privacy maintained. Otherwise this useful service (email) falls to the grips of hackers.
Ok! How this SSL works?

Certainly this is another good question. We have to know how SSL works. If it is not clear to us then we can hardly make out the importance SSL in providing utmost optimum security to our all kind online transaction.

I got my keys, but what about yours?

The SSL works with two sets of keys that are unique identities. These keys are called “Private Key” and “Public Key”. These are actually uniquely generated codes that are exchanged between a service provider’s web server and customer machine.

At the time of any online transaction, the requesting browser (customer’s browser) sends automated request to service provider’s server for sending the identity. In return the server sends its identity with SSL certificate (code). Then the browser sends response, if it trusts the process. Then again server sends the digitally signed acknowledged code to start process to start an encrypted session of transaction.

The process works with totally secure passwords (keys). These key are nothing but the identity of the two parties in transaction. When the browser requests retailer or the service provider of its identity (public key), the browser sends its public key (customer’s machine identity). Receiving it the server sends its public key encrypted with the browser’s public key. When the browser receives the key, it can decrypt the code with its private key only. When the decryption is done, again a request with browser public key and server public key goes to the server. This encryption can be decrypted by the server only with its private key. The moment this exchange is done a secure transaction session begins.

How you can be sure that nobody will steal the keys?

Now this seems a great matter of concern, right? No problem, I am telling you how secure is the process. Actually the encryption is a secure method of cryptography and it has its own algorithm that is ever modified and up to date with SSL process.

Formerly in its initial stage, 40 bits of encryption was easily decrypted by the hackers or the phishers. So advanced encryptions process has started with 128 bits. Now even 256 bits of advanced encryption has started and it will take years for the hackers to decrypt the code.

Besides this, the SSL use its own set of protocol in the use of SSL encryption. There is almost impossible chance to break through this protocol.

Can’t there be any guarantee or witness from anybody known and respected?

Oh come one you know that the SSL certification comes from major and reputed certifiers as Verisign or Thawte. These are the major authorities who take guarantee of the certified service provider (you and your website).

The authority (which ever you prefer) Verisign or Thawte to get the certification, always verifies the existence and legal documentation of your company. After you have been found genuine to offer certification, they confer you the certification. It is not that you have money and can easily get SSL certificates.

Remember customers will see their authentication logo in your site and certainly a click on the ‘padlock’ will show your certificate. A customer can and generally relies on these authorities and their certifications.

The change of “http://” to https://

Now you know that your security of online transaction is maximum, if you go for SSL certification of your site. Then there may be a little confusion about the ‘https’ instead of ‘http’. This is nothing but a sense or the mark that shows any particular page is secure by the SSL in application. It confirms that SSL is active for the site. It provides the viewers or the customer that he or she is under secure transaction. And the HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure.

Now tell me if my website is eligible for SSL or not?

Every website can be eligible to be secured with SSL. But there are a few points to consider when you are trying to buy a SSL certificate. Let us have a look on them.
  • A website has to be developed with proper programming. And there cannot be any ambiguous copyright of the programming. I mean to say the owner of the site has to be the owner of the copyright.
  • The web server (may be own or rented) space and the registration of domain name used by the business has to get the permission from the concerned (if any) to purchase SSL.
  • The business applying for SSL has to prove that it has the physical existence. The contact reflected on the website needs to match with the physical address.
  • Any business applying to get certification needs to show and place legal authorization of business to become secure through SSL.
This thing comes in consideration as certifiers ask for these documents and clarifications. So keep the above points in mind when trying to get SSL for your site.

If I have the legal authority, which SSL certificate will be best for me?

It is fine that you satisfy the general norms of certifications. But you must test your site before buying a SSL certificate. And you should be thinking about suitable certificate.

Get a test or trial version for certification of your site. Check if your site is eligible to get the certification. And if you get things right, you may go for ‘organization validation’ or ‘extended validation’.

If your business is your own (mean to say you as an individual), you are going to get organizational certificates. But a limited, private limited, LLC or other form of corporate business or government concerns get extended certification.

Let’s be secure and relax!

So without any kind of delay, go and secure your online transaction through website with SSL certification. I am sure, your business will grow manifold, and the moment you become able to win the faith of your visitors or the potential customers.

For more webmaster related information visit www.onlinewebdirectory.com which is one of the leading business directories for graphic design companies and web design company. In this web directory you will get host of web design and development related service providers. You also can find out a company that can help you to develop website that is compatible in design and programming to SSL certification.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Dos and don’ts of website link exchange

There is no doubt that every one of us either engage ourselves or hire search engine optimizers to see our site on top of the search engine results page (SERP). And it is fact that website link exchange is one of the major processes to get better SERP. At the same time all of us know that link exchange process cannot be relentless or without proper strategy. There are always some dos and don’ts in all kind of practices; website link exchange is no exception. For say, you should not continue link exchange with irrelevant, illegal sites, buy links or use automated process to exchange link.

Like all other major sites, Onlinewebdirectory.com, one of the largest and popular web directories for web design company, does adhere to some dos and don’ts in website link exchange process. And here we are trying to put forward some of the major points that are going to help the readers of this blog in link exchange to get maximum benefits.
  • First of all, try to create a separate link page and keep it well connected with the home page. A link page should not consist more than 100 links as search engines only value the first 100 links. So you should also eye exchanging link with sites that follow this strategy.
  • In website link exchange, link only with relevant sites. It is not that you go for all the sites that you come across on web. Some people are found lured in exchanging links with highly popular sites with higher page ranks, though the sites are not having any relevance to their business. If you tend to do this, your site or sites will be not valued by the search engines.
  • Do not exchange links with illegal sites or restricted sites. All of the major search engines have some restriction in valuing the website link exchange. Sites that spread violence, pornography, terrorism, gambling or any extremism are not given any importance by the search engines. A website exchanging link with such type of websites may be banned.
  • Try to go for 3way website link exchange process and avoid the reciprocal (2 way) link exchange. Actually search engines value the link backs “in the sense that for necessary purpose the links are exchanged between sites”. But now for most of the webmasters, website link exchange is “solely” to get better position in SERP and page ranks. To restrict this tendency a little bit, search engines have started valuing less to the two way (reciprocal) link exchange. So you have to eye on 3 way (ask others to link with your partner or known sites instead of putting link on yours) exchange process where your link is not found on other sites by the search engines like 2-way process.
  • In website link exchange process always your initiative should be to exchange link with sites that have higher page rank, Alexa rank and cached by the search engines. Search engines like Google value back-link to increase page-rank of a site which is linked with higher or similar ranked site. And how will you know that a site or page is eligible for link exchange? If it is not cached by the search engines like Google, then it is not eligible for link exchange.
  • Do not go for automated website link exchange software, link firms or link trading. Sometimes these software or firms exchange link with sites which is irrelevant to your site and your site may become vulnerable to be banned. These techniques are easily caught by the search engines. Always go for manual link exchange, it helps you genuinely.
  • Proper monitoring of the complete website link exchange process is more than essential. You can never be careless in this process. If you don’t keep attention, your website may have link with a site that does not provide “do-follow” link. You will never understand that automated link exchanges are coming your way.
The above are some of the major points to remember when anybody or a webmaster goes for website link exchange process. There are lots of other points that you may find out in several web tutorials and web documents. Reminding you once again that what is written above are from the practical experience of us. At least you should know that you are trying to get the best result for website link exchange process, not a short cut to success in SERP. Finally to sum up the things we can say be positive, have patience, and avoid all the misleading techniques of link exchange. If you do not find out the relevant sites for exchanging links, you may visit web directories like ours. Your path to success will get a big start. Best of luck for your link exchange initiatives!