5 Important Steps You Should Take Before Exchanging Links

This month has been really busy for me and that is why I have not been able to update my blogs as regularly as I have always wanted to. Nonetheless, I try my best to keep sharing my experiences and knowledge about SEO, Blogging, Marketing and Moneymaking with you guys. Today, I am going to talk about exchanging links. As webmasters, we all know that link exchanges are good ways to drive traffic to your own website or blog, get backlinks and thus boost your website's PageRank. However, one needs to be very careful when exchanging links with other webmasters.

Link Exchange - What is it?
For those who do not know, link exchange is when two webmasters decided to put each other's website's link on their own websites. This is a common type of link exchange known as two way link exchange. The second type of link exchange is known as three way link exchange. In such a link exchange, a webmaster places his website A's link on the other webmaster's website B. In return, website A's webmaster places webmaster B's link on his website C. Thus, there are a total of three websites involved.

5 steps you should take before exchanging links

1. Carefully check the content of the website - You always want to exchange links with only quality websites that are regularly updated. Make sure that the content is interesting. Also, you do not want to exchange links with sites that contain adult material (and other content that Google does not like).
   
2. Check the website's PageRank - While content is important, a lot of webmasters also consider PageRank before exchanging links. Why? Just so that they can get a nice backlink for their site and thus boost its PageRank.
3. Verify the PageRank - If you consider PageRank as a major factor then I strongly suggest that you verify the website's PageRank. There are several ways to generate a false PageRank and you need to know how to detect fake PageRank.
   
4. Check if the website is a link farm - A lot of webmasters just create websites and then try to put as many links as possible on their website. Such sites with numerous irrelevant links are considered as link farms and linking to such sites can hurt your website's PageRank.
5. Check where your link will be placed - You don't want your link to be placed somewhere in the corner at the bottom of the page where no one will see it. Your link should be placed in a proper place where the visitors can easily see it.

Finally, I would like to say that sometimes you should not care about PageRank very much when exchanging links. PageRank is a good factor but it is never permanent. A website that has a PageRank of 6 today can completely lose it in the next update. Thus, try to get backlinks from websites with relevant and interesting content as well.

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Some Useful Links:
Voting tools for volunteers on the go - Google Blog
Make a date with data in Google Analytics - Inside Adsense

Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
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SpeakToMe - Learn to monitize your site properly

It is a very difficult task to make a site popular and get a good amount of constant traffic daily. However, once your site or online business becomes popular, it doesn't necessarily mean that your revenue will increase. In fact, if a site is not properly monetized, the chances are that you will not make much money.

There are different ways to monetize a site, depending on the type of the site. I recently came across a great way to monetize your website called SpeakToMe. Webmasters can use SpeakToMe to create their expert pages with several features such as webcam, chat, direct payment services and click-to-call. You have the choice of either hosting that expert page with SpeakToMe or embed it into your own site. Your clients can use these features to communicate with you and whenever they do that, you have the chance to make money. You can generate significant amount of revenue by charging your clients on a per-minute basis during each call.



One of the best things about SpeakToMe is that it does not cost anything to get started with it. You can begin to use this great feature for no cost at all. However, once you start making money, you will have to pay some fees.

Overall, I think that SpeakToMe is a great way to monetize your site and there are good chances of making some money if you use it properly. If you find it interesting, then go ahead and give it a try.

Google makes some nice changes to iGoogle

I wasn't a big fan of iGoogle few weeks ago since it takes quite some time to load and well, I didn't really need it. However, later on, I started using it and I am loving it. I can add feeds from my favorite blogs and stay up to date with everything. I can even have my Gmail and GTalk embedded. How cool is that?

When I logged into my iGoogle account today, I noticed some cool changes. Google seemed to have played around with several of the applications. So if you use one of those applications on your iGoogle page, then you must have noticed those changes as well. I check Google's official blog and found a recent post called: What's new with iGoogle? The main change is that Google has enabled canvas view for several applications. You can now view the applications in the same window instead of a different window (i.e. you had to open a new window to go to your GMail account).

Changes in iGoogle

- Here are some applications that have experienced the changes.

• News - New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post.
• Games - Sudoku Gadget, GoComics Gadget
• Entertainment - TV Guide, Flixter's movies gadget, iLike gadget
  
• Google - GMail, Google Finance

If you haven't noticed any changes, I suggest you try adding some of these gadgets. The new changes make iGoogle even better than before!

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Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
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Round Table

Recently, I stumbled upon a very interesting site and decided to share it with you guys. The site is called Round Table Life Insurance or just Round Table. As stated on the homepage, Round Table is a non-profit forum that is dedicated to providing honest and factual information to its readers. Readers can easily use Round Table to acquire detailed information about various insurance topics such as fixed annuity, mortgage protection insurance etc.

Note that you will not be able to get any answers to questions about best life insurance because Ronald Belham, owner of Round Table, prefers to keep his answers honest and unbiased. Instead, you can get information about how to find best life insurances. An example of an interesting question that I read on the site recently is, “What does short term life insurance mean?” If you have questions like this and would like to find reliable answers then I suggest that you definitely pay Round Table a visit.