Obtaining quality one-way back links to your website has become a crucial strategy for building link popularity and improving search engine ranking. With the recent devaluing of reciprocal linking by the major search engines, relevant one-way links are more important that ever to the success of your business.

(PRWEB) December 22, 2005 — Launched in September of 2005, Content Edge is an article directory and syndication service for writers and a content sources for webmasters. Publishing articles on article directory sites is an effective strategy for building relevant back links to your site. Webmasters seeking content, related to their niche market, can download your article and re-publish it on their on their site.

The viral nature of this strategy becomes evident as your article is picked and published on other sites. Each time your article is re-published, this translates into improved page rank, link popularity, and search engine ranking which means more targeted organic traffic flowing to your site.

Reciprocal linking has been used successfully for some time as a linking strategy but recent shifts in search engine algorithms appears to have devalued this method. This has become more evident since the most recent update by Google know as Jagger.

Jim Hedger, a writer for Search Engine News says “Google is judging sites on who they link to along with who links to them. Before the update, a link from your site to an irrelevant site was more a waste of time than a waste of opportunity. Today irrelevant links seem to be both. Google’s desire to offer stable and highly relevant SERPS while preventing outright manipulation of those SERPS was the biggest cause of the shift.”

The importance of implementing a sound linking strategy cannot be over emphasized. Jack Humphrey, author of Power Linking 2005 makes the point, “Links are and always will be the lifeblood of any website. Sticking to a well-planned and constantly implemented linking campaign grounded in proven results, time and again, will always get your business through the massive changes that seem to come and go with the search engines”

Search engines want to deliver quality content and they want to see relevant links pointing to your site. If you provide both your efforts will be well rewarded with more targeted traffic and a healthier bottom line. On that note, it’s better to produce one high quality article and distribute it widely than to write ten articles that offer very little value to the reader.

Content Edge ( http://www.content-edge.com ) provides you with the means of accomplishing these goals. You provide good quality articles related to the topic of your website, and we provide the means for distribution. Since you publish your articles in categories related to your nice market, you immediately have a relevant link pointing to your site. Now, content seeking webmasters can start spreading it across the Internet. It’s a classic win-win strategy.

Have you ever then looked and seen a small icon next to the name of the link?

That is a favicon or a favourite icon. They also appear in the address bar in browsers such as Firefox and more and more designers are using them. They are simple to make, even for a novice computer user, yet add a quality image to your web site and brand.

So here is a small tutorial on how to do it. It is a lot more simpler than you would first think.

1. Firstly choose your image that will become your ‘favicon’.

2. Resize it to 16 x 16 pixels.

3. Download a free software to change the format of the image. I used Pixel Toolbox.

4. Open the image in Pixel Toolbox and then save it as a .icon file.

5. Upload it to the root directory of your web site. (Or ask your web host to do it, if you don’t have FTP access.)

6. Open your web browser, save your own site as a favourite and then see your icon in the Favourites list.

How many computers in the world could you get your favicon on? It’s free, takes less than half an hour, yet gives your site the edge.

Copyright Roz Edwards - The Friday Team

How many emails do you send each day?
How many emails do you compose each day?

Each time you click ’send’ - it’s an opportunity to present yourself, so take advantage and ensure that your email signature is ready for action.

There are different ways of presenting your signature, some simple, some complicated. It all comes down to the individual needs and tastes.

All email programmes will let you add a signature to your emails.

Let’s have a look at Outlook Express.

1. Click on Tools -> Options -> Signatures ->
2. Click on ‘new’ and then type in your signature in the field below.

As an example, here is the one I use. It saves me so much time every single day.

Kind regards
Roz Edwards
Director - The Friday Team Ltd
08700 14 42 42
www.fridayteam.com
www.fridayteam.co.uk
www.fridayteam.net
www.go2malawi.com
mail@fridayteam.com

Notice the links are not working. This is exactly what I have typed in to Outlook Express.

However, when it appears within the body of a new email that I wish to compose, it looks like this:

Kind regards
Roz Edwards
Director - The Friday Team Ltd
08700 14 42 42
www.fridayteam.com
www.fridayteam.co.uk
www.fridayteam.net
www.go2malawi.com
mail@fridayteam.com

Note that the links are now working! This is because Outlook Express recognises the www text as the start of a hyperlink and then formats the text accordingly.

3. The last thing to remember, before closing your signature option window in Outlook Express, is to tick - “Add signatures to all outgoing messages”

If you wish, you can add them to replies and forwards too, it all depends on your individual style.

So now go and create your e-signature and let your emails work for your marketing department!

Copyright Roz Edwards - The Friday Team Ltd.