A sad fairy tale of a Fall from Grace in the Kingdom of Google.

A long time ago, well, around 2002 I was using 'reciprocal linking' with outstanding results. I had five home business sites all interlinked and the search engines loved me. I was their favourite subject'.Not really, but you get what I mean.

It wasn't unusual to see two or three of my sites sharing the same top page on Google for highly competitive 'work at home' terms. I had five different accounts with Linksmanager managing my different sites, sending me new link partners daily. I believed that there was no end to the heights I could reach, in terms of search engine rankings and the subsequent traffic that the top results produced.

Alas, a lot has changed since then.

The search engines soon cottoned on that wiley Internet Marketers like myself had automated the process, with the help of quality services of course, but automated no less. So in the space of a few weeks or months maybe, my sites lost the power through reciprocal linking that they once enjoyed and my rankings fell. I wasn't banned or banished to the nether regions of Google BUT, once you fall off the top two or three pages you might as well not be listed at all.

You see, Google likes to see 'natural' linking activity, ie. a person visits your site, they like what they see, maybe see your site as a valuable resource and decide to add a link back. This is a 'natural' process. When Google finds that the linkback is being reciprocated then they know that some sort of deal has been set up and the relevancy drops way down.

Today I am climbing back up the charts, so to speak using one way linking and I am happy to report that it is semi:automated and starting to produce the same kind of results that I used to acquire. There are a few of ways to get one way links:

1. The natural way, of which no one has control over: Visitors will find your site useful or not and decide to add a link back to you of their free will.

2. You can buy one way links: Many companies out there are brokers for website owners who sell a link on their site for a monthly or yearly fee.

3. You can set up a linking strategy with another webmaster to set up a link back structure, ie. he links to your site and rather than link straight back to the site he links from, you link to another one of his sites. So one way links are created and they look 'natural'. This is an effective strategy but too labourious for my liking.

4. Add your site to link directories: This is the most effective way from my experience, especially if you have automated or semi:automated the process. One way links from high quality directories will do more for your website ranking that any other single internet marketing method.

It's important when getting back links that you use different anchor texts. Using the same link text will look automated. Link backs from websites all using a variety of linking texts will look as natural as you can possibly expect.

In conclusion, the more natural you can make your linking strategy appear to be, the more you will benefit in the Search Engines. And as Google, Yahoo, and the other top dogs become more stringent in routing out automated processes, you may still have a chance of keeping one step ahead of the pack.

That said, there are NO guarantees in Google Kingdom.