In the very beginnings of the Internet
the web started with a single HTML page, shortly followed by a second HTML page. Then along came the most important concept in the creation of the Internet, the linking of those two web pages together. Soon after, web pages became web sites and then multiple web sites linked together. Now visitors from one web site could easily visit the other web site by simply clicking a link. The link itself became an advertisement exactly like a sign or advertising billboard to another's webmaster’s web site. This was the first and only form of Internet marketing that existed for web sites. Other forms of links appeared, shortly after, such as banne! r links, image links and others. The more links you had as a webmaster, the more visitors to your web site. It was truly a world of who had the most links wins. Next, along came the search engines and their robots indexing the web. The creators of the search engines had the bright idea to take the entire knowledge of the Internet and store it into a huge computer database. As new web masters came along, Link marketing was forgotten. Search engine marketing became everything. You must understand that a listing on the results of a search engine’s page is nothing more than an ordinary link to your web site, but out of your control as a webmaster.
Sadly, linking was now left to the search engines and lost to the webmasters. Web site marketing became a quest to always be in the top10 results in the search engine listings, and if you weren’t, your web site wasn't successful. Someone smart might ask, “So how can I be in the top 10 when there's close to 6 billion web pages on the Internet?" Good question! So why didn't webmasters continue with linking? The answer was there was too much work involved in trading links. There was also too much money being made by many unscrupulous web marketers selling the novice web masters the ideas and myths that they could be in the top 10 listings in the search engines. Plus, trading links was tedious work and there wasn’t the money to be made in selling links because of time-consuming costs of it. It's easy to make money on search engine marketing. You can promise webmasters anything, offer no proof, and make tens of thousands of dollars. Now don't get me wrong, there are many search engine marketers out there who we’re honest business peop! le but too many of them were not. Once, there was even a common misconception on the web that having links on your web site was a bad thing. Articles and books were written that carefully explained that the link you had on your web site, allowed your visitor to easily escape and go to someone else's web site. Don't laugh, it’s true. This stupendous ignorance perpetuated on the web for years.
These people actually believed that by not having links on their web site they trapped their visitors like cyber roach motels of the Internet. Then along came Google, telling webmasters that Internet linkages between web sites was actually being used in the algorithms that search engines used to get top listings in their search result pages. Literally overnight Link marketing became OK again, but for all the wrong reasons. It became accepted because of what web site linkages could do for search engine marketing, not for Link marketing by itself. So once again the search engine myth perpetuated itself. In reality, one could say with excellent logic, that Link marketing is the father of all Internet or web site marketing. A link is a road to your web site, period. Whether that road is a link you click from a search engine results page, from a link directory, a banner advertisement, a sponsored ad on a web sites or an URL address printed on a business card that you type into your browser’s address text box, it is still a link to your web site. If you take this one step further, the more times that a link to your web site is shown to Internet users, the more visitors you will get to your web site. It’s that simple. Ask yourself, "What do I need to do to have a lot of links pointing to my web site so I will get qualified consistent traffic, day after day, month after month?" The key phrase is consistent traffic.
Search engine traffic comes and goes without rhyme or reason, the competition is very stiff and the rules always change. If you use any type of paid sponsored links or ads, you must be able to track your cost all the way to a per sale basis. To make matters worse, what works today, others find out about and drive up the cost. Today you may pay $.50 per click or per download but next month that could rise to double or triple the amount. If you're an experienced webmaster yo! u will not be arguing about what I'm saying. If you are still not convinced, try this: find any successful web site of any kind, go to any search engine and find the number of backward links that successful web site has. You will find a direct correlation between the success, the amount of traffic and the number of links that point to that web site from other web sites. There are no successful web sites without a lot of links. I'll be so bold as to say, without an aggressive Link marketing campaign, your web site marketing endeavors will fail along with your web site. Personally, I have marketed dozens of web sites. 99.99% of my marketing endeavors go to Link marketing. Every one of my web sites has been successful. All have reached one million hits per month within three to six months and it hasn't cost me anything but a little time.
