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There are three main types of insurance cover you can buy to protect yourself and your family: life insurance, private medical insurance and critical illness insurance. If you want your financial health to be completely bionic then you could choose all three types of insurance, but if your family finances are more restricted, it might be better to insure yourself with critical illness insurance and life insurance. Critical illness insurance should not be confused with private medical insurance or even income protection insurance and it’s important that you do a full evaluation of your needs before you pursue the different insurance options.

The purpose of critical illness cover (CIC) is to fill a gap that is left by traditional life insurance policies, which will only provide a pay-out on the death of the policy holder. CIC provides a tax free lump sum following the diagnosis of one of a number of life-threatening illnesses or certain types of surgery. The sorts of situations usually covered include the diagnosis of cancer, a stroke, a heart attack, the loss of a limb and many other serious disabilities.

Critical illness insurance policies are typically sold to cover mortgage repayments and are often sold alongside a life insurance package to ensure the borrower can repay the loan in all circumstances. It is worth noting that if a combined life insurance and critical illness cover package is taken out, then it would not be unusual for an insurer to pay out for only one of the events. Therefore if the policy holder suffers a critical illness and then dies at a later date, there will only be one pay-out – for the initial illness. It is essential whenever you take out a policy that you make sure it covers all of your needs and those of your family. Don’t estimate how much cover you may actually need. You will additionally need to consider the period for which you want critical illness cover, such as a set number of years to cover the mortgage or no fixed period at all, so you can maintain the policy as long as you need it.

The critical illness insurance market has come under increasing pressure in recent years, as the number of claims has soared, survival rates increased and medical science has made it far easier to detect serious conditions much earlier. These factors have prompted some serious questions about the viability of critical illness cover, particularly guaranteed products.

For the majority of people, the most important benefit of critical illness insurance is to protect their mortgage and most mortgage protection policies allow you to include life insurance and critical illness cover. If you already have life insurance in place, you can buy an additional, separate critical illness insurance policy.

Resources:

The Association of British Insurers

Consumer Insurance Comparison Research

About Rachel

Rachel writes for the personal finance blog Cashzilla – personalfinanosaurus – licensed to roar.

Rachel spends her not-so-free time researching and writing personal finance articles, but she gets through it with Smarties and Fruit Pastilles.

To read more about Rachel and Cashzilla visit http://www.cashzilla.co.uk

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Disclaimer:

I am not a financial expert. Read my article, but do your own research. No lawsuits here please.

When I went online in 1998, my experience with PCs was limited to basic word processing, and the most technical term I knew was, “Load game.”

Today, I maintain my own website and I roam the Internet with confidence.

But during those first months online, I gained more worry lines and lost more sleep than I ever did when my children were teenagers!

Most of my frustration was due to the lack of any simple instructions on how to do the most basic things. Allow me to illustrate with the Saga of the Alt Tags…

After creating a killer of a website, complete (or should that be “replete”?) with dancing raisins, gold fish swimming in bowls, bounding panthers, five different fonts on every page and a flock of birds that flew from one side of my page to the other (is that cool, or what?!) I decided that I’d log on to one of those sites that offered a free assessment of web pages.

I couldn’t understand 90% of the report, but one point did penetrate, and that was the warning that I should use “alt tags”.

I was convinced of the need to use alt tags (I’d received so many “warnings”); I was willing to use alt tags; I was desperate to use alt tags — but what on earth were alt tags?

I scoured the Help files on all my programs; I visited all the message boards and help forums I could find; I instigated searches on the Internet’s finest search engines …

Every source told me that I should definitely use alt tags, without explaining what they were.

As the time decreased and the frustration increased, I finally found out that alt tags were the alternative names for images and that they should provide a description of the image.

I dutifully went through, typing in names for every image on my site…”red bullet; black square bullet; black round bullet; black squiggly bullet …”

This seemed totally pointless, but I’d been told by the web’s finest to include the name of each image and who was I to argue?

A couple of weeks later, I happened to be viewing the source code for a site that was number one in a search listing, when I noticed that their alt tags included the name of their site.

Clever!

I spent another few hours, changing all my alt tags to read, “mysite red bullet; mysite black square bullet …”

This nagged at me, however; it seemed a bit too close to trying to fool the search engines for my comfort.

It wasn’t until another month had passed that I read yet another article that explained why alt tags were necessary. It seems that many people turn off the images on their browsers and the alt tags show up in place of the missing goldfish, birds etc.

Suddenly, it all made sense; there was actually a logical reason to include alt tags; they weren’t names or descriptions, they were captions! (I have to confess, that I haven’t added ‘captions’ to all my bullets this time — I know it’s possible to use “invisible tags” such as alt=” ” but I haven’t quite had time to do it … it’s next on my list …)

So, now when you visit my site, you’ll notice that my alt tags are phrases that tell you something about what the site has to offer, “Professional writing services,” “Home study tutorials,” “Improve your writing” and so on.

And it only took me four months to discover this!

How many millions of hours have been spent in fruitless searches for such simple problems? We could have found the answer to the meaning of life in less time!

Jennifer Stewart offers professional writing services for web pages, press releases, advertising material, business reports, content for autoresponders, technical booklets and articles for newsletters. For those who want their own writing double-checked for accuracy, Jennifer offers proof reading or full editing. Website: http://www.write101.com

Purpose: Learn about the new Polygraph for management hires

His heart dropped when he saw his boss from his current company walk into the interview room with his prospective new employer. In a flash, every exaggeration on his resume was known. All of the excitement of a new and better-paying position instantly vanished.

That meeting ended quickly with an exchange of courtesies and a kind rejection. The interviewer walked back to her office frustrated at the amount of time and effort she had invested into this candidate. She had been excited about his strong resume and test results and happier yet that the exhausting search process was nearly over. At the same time, she was glad to know now about his weaknesses. They certainly would have cost her company a great deal more time, money and frustration if she had hired him.

70% of Resumes Can’t Be Trusted
Research shows that 70% of the resumes on your desk right now contain fabrications and exaggerations. And it’s not just for that sales or middle management job. An executive search firm reported that after reviewing thousands of resumes the top three lies were the number of years in a position, personal accomplishments, and the size of the organizations they’ve managed. Look at the people you’ve already hired to staff your company. I’m not suggesting that you distrust them, but that same 70% applies to the resumes you looked at last year too.

It is no wonder that the 80/20 rule is in effect at your company and on your team. Despite all of the testing, analyzing, interviewing, screening, background checks and gut feels, you would still like someone more effective in 80% of the positions of your company. That is true for your upper management also. You’d like to see 80% of them hit the road and be replaced by people with abilities and values that mirror those of the 20% that produce 80% of the results.

Avoid The Costly Hiring Mistake You’re About to Make
It’s enough to make you cry, because you simply want someone who can handle the responsibilities of the job, and you’ll gladly pay well for their services. To complicate the matter, when considering upper management and executive staff, a great deal of their responsibility is as a leader. You are no longer looking for a technical expert, whose abilities are easily graded; you are now in that horribly grey area called soft-skills. Can you truly evaluate leadership skills and a person’s ability to operate effectively under stress from a resume, interviews and personality tests?

Look around you for the evidence.

What’s worse is that despite the gross volume of different paper tests, interview techniques and evaluation tools, you are still making mistakes in your hiring decisions. Yet, these mistakes are easily identified in advance, but not by using the existing passive methods. The wrong hiring decisions cost you enormous amounts of money and frustration and resulting inefficiencies. Studies show that the cost of turnover is three times the annual salary of the replaced employee. However, if you could make more informed hiring decisions, especially when filling your higher-paid leadership positions; it will have the opposite effect. You begin to reap monetary and efficiency benefits in an upward spiral.

What is needed is an advanced evaluation tool. You verify that someone can swim by putting them into the pool. You verify that someone can lead by putting them into a real leadership scenario. Like the pool the characteristics of the leadership scenario don’t have to match the job exactly. To swim, you need enough water over a long enough distance. To lead, you need a task, a team, real stress and real consequences like the kind found in the Leading Concept’s Ranger TLC Experience.

Use This Polygraph to Identify the Real Leader
This leadership scenario is your new polygraph, and it’s legal. It’s like having the candidate’s old boss sitting at your side pointing out exaggerations and lies. Putting your top management candidates into this leadership scenario and evaluating them gives you the ability, in conjunction with the other tools, to avoid costly mistakes and have trust and confidence in the people you do hire.

To learn more about how immersion team building and leadership training can help you visit: http://www.leadingconcepts.com

Copyright 2005 Brace E. Barber

Brace E. Barber works extensively with Leading Concepts, Inc. (http://www.leadingconcepts.com) in the field of immersion soft-skill training with a focus is on how to develop leaders, who are prepared for and can succeed under stressful circumstances. He is the author of the book No Excuse Leadership. (http://www.noexcuseleadership.com)

Futures trading software plays an important role in the economics of speculation. Speculation brings about a gradual adjustment of prices to the contingencies foreseen by the speculator. If a speculator foresees that the market situation after six months will warrant a rise in prices, he begins to make purchases with the objective of selling the commodity at a profit. The price begins to rise gradually, as more and more of the commodity is purchased by the speculators.

It follows from the above that speculation steadies the trend of prices and restricts the movement of prices within a narrow range. The peaks and valleys of price fluctuations are made considerably smoother by the activities of speculators who buy in anticipation of a rise in prices and sell in expectation of a decline therein. Speculators usually take these decisions with the help of futures trading software.

Speculation welds various markets together by keeping prices between different markets at a normal parity. This is achieved through specialized speculative operations called arbitrage operations. When the price of a commodity or a security in one market is higher than that prevailing in another market, the speculators, with the help of futures trading software, will at once take the opportunity to make a profit. They will naturally make their purchases in the market at a lower price, to sell it at a profit in a market where the same thing fetches a higher price. In this way, speculation acts as an equalizer, or leveler of prices between various markets.

In spite of the well-recognized benefits of speculation outlined above, such activity comes under fire quite frequently. The main theme of attack against speculation generally is that it is an evil practice, like gambling. In theory, it is assumed that the speculators speculate only if they possess the necessary skill, foresight, intelligence and finance to do so. In practice, however, all sorts of people speculate on exchanges. Many of them proceed recklessly and without adequate finances, with the result that they come to grief and may lose more than they can afford.

Futures Trading provides detailed information on Futures Trading, Online Futures Tradings, Futures Trading Software, Commodity Futures Tradings and more. Futures Trading is affiliated with Stock Day Trading.

For those who face depression, every day of their lives may seem like a struggle. A struggle to get up, a struggle to face the day and the people involved and it can be a struggle to make the most of the day. It just seems simpler to crawl back into bed and forget about it all. But, the world needs us, we need the world too. So, we get up and deal with the depression. But, there may be a way or a place in which the depression you feel is similar to the depression that others feel and are dealing with as well.

A depression support group can be a great way to see that your situation is not the only one out there. By talking with others who are dealing with depression, you will be able to understand yourself a little better. Maybe they can offer advice on making the day easier or happier. Maybe they can offer an understanding that comes with friendship. By meeting with others in a group setting, you may be able to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

While it may never cure your depression, simply adding the time to your day to talk about depression with people who understand can be a cure for your aching heart. If you would like more information on finding these support groups or dealing with depression in general, you can find them throughout the internet.

One good site to visit is www.avoiddepression.com. It is not a medical website, but more of a portal to understanding what is going on and how to help yourself with your depression.

S A Baker recommends visiting Depression Help to learn more about depression

Researchers have discovered that most of the daily communicating we do is in the form of listening. It is mainly by listening that we receive the vital information needed to make decisions, perform roles, and cope with the realities surrounding us. It is a little embarrassing or humbling to admit that we have some deficiencies in listening. But we have a good excuse. Whoever taught us to listen? We were all taught to read, write, speak, but at no time was a course offered in listening. Our listening training, if it could be called that, consisted of admonitions: “Pay attention,” “Open your ears,” “Listen”. Our poor listening habits may result in conflicts, costly errors, and inefficiency. It is common knowledge that organizations which thrive and prosper year after year are organizations that spend money and energy on interpersonal skills training, including communication skills that focus on listening.

The paradox of the human listening function is that although it may seem like the easiest and most effortless of all communication functions (writing, speaking, reading, and listening) it is, in reality, the most difficult and requires the most effort — and skill — to perform properly. The reason for this is that in speaking you initiate the ideas and the easily-anticipated flow of words to express them. In listening, however, another person initiates the ideas and the words which strike your ears and enter your brain as totally new information. Studies have shown that in listening most people miss most of this information — and nobody notices.

The following are some barriers that affect our ability to listen: 1. Preoccupation with your own thoughts can prevent you from hearing and becoming involved in what others are saying. 2. Hostility or anger may be carried over from a recent experience and distort the message. 3. Emotionally charged words in a message may block listening or “turn you off.” 4. A perceived difference in power of status between sender and receiver may cause communication problems. 5. Stereotyping a speaker’s appearance, accent, or speech pattern can obstruct communication. 6. The physical environment may present noise or visual distractions. Keep these in mind next time you are in the position to listen.

Copyright AE Schwartz & Associates All rights reserved. For additional presentation materials and resources: ReadySetPresent and for a Free listing as a Trainer, Consultant, Speaker, Vendor/Organization: TrainingConsortium

CEO, A.E. Schwartz & Associates, Boston, MA., a comprehensive organization which offers over 40 skills based management training programs. Mr. Schwartz conducts over 150 programs annually for clients in industry, research, technology, government, Fortune 100/500 companies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. He is often found at conferences as a key note presenter and/or facilitator. His style is fast-paced, participatory, practical, and humorous. He has authored over 65 books and products, and taught/lectured at over a dozen colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Kids like to ride the allterain vehicles just like adults do. The adult ones are a little too big for some children and are not suited for them to ride. Some of the bigger atvs are more powerful and are too large for children to control. That is why there is a kid atv for younger children to ride and have fun with.

The kid atvs are made to be smaller so that they will be suitable for young children. They will be able to ride their atvs and enjoy them without worrying about the size of the machine and being too large for them. The smaller ones have handlebars that are closer to the seat and the foot pedals are easier for them to reach. This will make the ride for any child is safer and more fun.

There are many stores that have different kid atvs to choose from. There are many styles and brands of these fun vehicles for them too choose from. Each child is different and the needs for the ATV may be different as well. It is important to make sure that the child is comfortable on the atv and that all of the features are accessible for the child while riding.

There are many colors and designs of the kid atvs that are out there on the market. For some kids, they want to have a certain color or model. If you cannot find the right one in the stores, you can shop online to find the ones that fit your budget as well as your needs. There are many shops online or you can check out the auction sites for the right ATV for you.

A kid ATV is going to have a smaller engine and horsepower as well. This is so that the ATV is not more powerful than what the child can handle. This is important for safety reasons. A child should have the right ATV that has adequate power for them. Children do no need to ride at fast speeds that are dangerous for them. It is possible for the child to have fun with their kid ATV and not ride at high rates of speed. This is very important for parents to check into when they are deciding on the right ATV for their child.

It is also important to for the child to learn the proper safety so that their ride will be a good one. All children should know the right safety procedures so that they will not be in danger while on their kid ATV. Anyone can have a lot of fun as long as they are using common sense and safety first.

About the author:
Magne Bjorklund http://www.kid-atv.net/

Also visit:
http://www.a-mobility-scooter.info/
http://www.kid-bedding.biz/

When we think about the benefits of being ensuring a good bill
of health by keeping track of our daily intake of prescribed
vitamins, minerals and as well as the other nutrients that are
needed by your body in order to stay healthy. It is important to
be conscious of the fact that deficiencies in the daily intake
of vitamins and minerals can negatively affect not only your
physical capabilities but your how your mind functions as well.
Recent research has indicated that such deficiencies can even
contribute to one of the most common mental illnesses of all,
depression.

The Vitamin B complex is incredibly important to our mental
well-being and functioning. Even relatively small deficiencies
can have an adverse effect on a person’s mental health over
time. While serious nutrient deficiencies can actually
contribute to serious mental illnesses. As for the case of
trying your best to avoid mental illnesses, it is highly
important to make sure that your daily diet meets the
recommended amount of the Vitamin B complex.

It is also interesting to note that those with alcohol problems
– often used as a way to cope up with depression can actually
worsen one’s situation, are often suffering from Vitamin B
complex deficiencies. This is because alcohol actually destroys
the Vitamin B in a person’s body.

A lack of thiamine can also lead to a lack of energy as well as
to being sluggish all the time. When ignored and not taken care
of immediately, it can actually lead to deep fatigue, anxiety,
depression and even to having suicidal tendencies. It can also
bring on insomnia, which can contribute to the worsening of each
and every one of these symptoms. Serious deficiency in niacin
has been clinically associated with various mental symptoms like
cognitive slowness which concerns the processing of information,
dementia, anxiety and psychosis. Vitamin B5 has been found to
play a big role in the formation of hormones as well as other
brain chemical processes that are related to a person’s mood.
Nutritional deficiencies can lead to stress and certain types of
depression. Vitamin B6 is essential to the production of
serotonin and dopamine. If continuously ignored, the lack of
Vitamin B12 can eventually lead to various mental disorders such
as serious mood swings, mania, paranoia, dementia and even
hallucinations.

Vitamin C is also important in the prevention or easing the
state of depression that a person is in. It is important to note
that many common medications, both over the counter and
prescription drugs, can actually rob the body of Vitamin C,
which is why a lot of doctors tend to add vitamin C supplements
alongside their anti-depressant prescriptions.

Deficiencies in a number of minerals have been highly associated
with depression and other mental disorders. Among these are
magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, potassium and manganese. They
actually all combine in order to produce and release serotonin
and other compounds that can have positive effects on a person’s
mood and mental health. Other symptoms of a poor mental health
which are greatly associated with deficiencies in the essential
minerals that a person needs, include paranoia, confusion,
anxiety, depression, fatigue and tearfulness.

The brain is ruled by the chemical interactions that obviously
take place within it. These chemicals have a delicate balance to
maintain and nutrition definitely plays an integral role both in
the formation of these essential chemicals and their proper
maintenance. On every level of mental mood and functioning, it
is absolutely necessary that we make sure to meet the
recommended daily intake levels of vitamins, minerals as well as
the other nutrients. Dietary supplements, when used according to
recommended dosages, are a safe means of seeing to it that our
minds are functioning properly and effectively..

————————- Note: This article may be freely
reproduced as long as the AUTHOR’S resource box at the bottom of
this article is included and and all links must be
Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.
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Let me guess, you love music and would do anything to be able to enter into the fabulous life of the music business? Better yet, you would love to become the next record mogul like P.Diddy or Clive Davis.

Well, guess what? You can start a record label and enter into the fast paced and competitive world of music labels. And yes, there is a chance you could become a filthy rich record label mogul living the life of luxury. It CAN happen! But…it WON’T happen if you don’t take action. Just think, many of the famous record moguls today started their own record label either in debt or with little to no resources.

But why did they succeed? And how can you succeed?

Let’s take a look at the “how and why” you can become a filthy rich record label mogul.

First of all, you need to learn how to start a record label. You will be very surprised that it doesn’t take much money at all to get started. Basically, you need to come up with a name for your record label company first. Use a name that is unique and easy to memorize…and most of all, catchy. While you are at it, get a business line and a P.O. Box. To make things really official, get a business license for your new label.

The next step, and this is a biggie, is to find the right talent. The record label moguls who have hit pay dirt are the ones who took time out and became dedicated to the artists they took under their wings. They were able to see the unique talent and potential in their artist choices and make them bloom.

Just think, it only takes ONE great artist or band and one big song to shoot your label into the stratosphere of success. And the good thing is, you can start a record label right out of your own home. Of course, it can get a bit more detailed when it comes to contracts, publishing, and marketing your label.

But if you really want to know all the good stuff on starting a record label so you can take your chance at become a big record label mogul, get a copy of The Ultimate Record Label Handbook. It will cover all the basics you need to get going and it is easy to read.

Why not start a record label of your own and take a shot? If you love music, then you might just hit the jackpot. And better yet, you will finally be able to do work that you enjoy and have fun at.

What more could you ask for?

So in a nutshell, if you want to live the good life as a filthy rich record label mogul, you have to first start your label and secondly…find good talent. There is always loads of good talent out there to sign, you just have to have to know how to find the good stuff and market it to the masses!

Want to start your VERY own record label? Now YOU can!
The Ultimate Record Label Handbook will show you how!

D. Herren is an author, webdesigner, and…music lover!

How to Link In the first part I looked at Link Exchange
generally. Now I’ll take you through the fun part of actually
obtaining useful relevant backlinks. If you are convinced about
the benefits of linking, the question in your mind must be -
“Yes, but how do I go about obtaining incoming or backlinks?”.
There are various ways you can go about this, depending on
whether you are seeking pure backlinks - the best kind; or
whether you are prepared to settle for reciprocal links – the
most common; or whether you want to do someone a favor and give
them free publicity by unilaterally placing an outbound link on
your site without one in return – the easiest to do – just to
it.

One Way Backlinks

A backlink can only be obtained if there is website that carries
your link without one in return. This happens when your site is
linked in an article, directory, by request, or cited as an
authority or resource site by another due to its superior
content.

Content

When a website has fresh, unique, informative and interesting
content, when it is a recognized resource in as given area,
other sites will naturally link to it if only to raise the
profile of their own. For you as the webmaster, there is the
double bonus of not having to communicate with the linking site.
In practice, the context in which your link is carried would in
all likelihood be complimentary to you further raising your
profile.

The search engines in order to improve the relevance of their
SERPs are constantly on the lookout for such sites. Websites
that achieve consistently high search positions do so because of
the content aspect of their sites.

Articles

Writing and syndicating articles is probably the most effective
way to obtain one way inbound links. In recent months this has
become all the rage as blogging has taken on force of its own.
The idea behind all this frenzied literary activity is not a new
enlightenment, but the opportunity for people like you to
plaster their website links in as many places as possible. One
guy claimed to have had an article he wrote carried by 17000
websites, ezines, article directories etc. This would have
greatly boosted his “link popularity”, organic targeted traffic,
and overall business prospects – assume just 1% of the visitors
and readers of all those websites and ezines clicked on his link
– lots of traffic!

Directories

These days there are lots and lots of website directories on
every theme imaginable. While they vary in the way they operate,
they all have the effect of creating one way incoming links to
your site, which as we have seen is both a source of direct
organic traffic as well as a boon to your search engine defined
link popularity.

The more significant the directory the more beneficial the link
from them will be. A basic objective for seasoned webmasters is
to get their sites indexed by and included in the DMOZ, and
Yahoo! directories. These are the two major online website
directories, and inclusion in either would be of greater benefit
than inclusion in many of the smaller ones.

Request

These days, most webmasters will only consider a reciprocal link
exchange. However, there are still a few webmasters who would
consider a one way outbound link if they considered it
beneficial to their own visitors, depending on the nature of
their website. These will typically be personalized sites,
intranets, or non- directory information sources.

Peruse such sites carefully to assess fit, and if satisfied that
the website complements your own, contact the webmaster as
politely as possible and request that they carry your link as
well. Invite them to visit your site to make their own
assessment, and do not be put off if they request a reciprocal
link in return. However you will get the occasional webmaster
who will not object to a one way link. Give it a shot – what’s
to lose?

Reciprocal Links

As the term suggests, reciprocal links are a mutual exchange of
links with another website. They constitute the vast majority of
links found on the internet, and are established by mutual
arrangement.

So how do I get websites to link with me?

Identifying Link Partners

The first thing is to identify websites that would make suitable
link partners. These are sites that complement your own, and
therefore have a similar visitor profile to the type you are
looking for. For instance a website selling health food might
link up with a website about physical fitness. Be creative about
your choices; set up a spread sheet to keep track of your
approaches.

Visit the top 10 or 20 sites ranked in Google and Yahoo! for
your keywords and do some research on their link partners. You
will find not only do they have several link partners, but
partners that are quality sites for their content, linking
strategy, aesthetic appeal and so on. These are the sites you
should target for a link exchange request.

Note : The major search engines are reducing the number of links
they’ll show for each site, to cut down on search engine
spamming. You may thus find a specialized tool is necessary. A
good one for his purpose would be SEO
Elite which is a complete reciprocal links exchange
management tool.

Assess the sites you short-list for their relevance and
complementarities to your own. Ensure that they are quality
sites (if they are link partners of the top ten sites in your
niche they generally will be, but take nothing for granted).

Assess them for:

Linking Website - this is the specific website linking to the
rival websites in your niche that you are benchmarking. In order
to find all of the websites that link to them you can do a
couple of things. The most common way is to go to Google and
enter this search criteria: link:www.targetedwebsite.com. Once
you do this Google will return a large list of websites that
link to targetedwebsite.com. As noted above, you’ll get a larger
list by going to Yahoo! and entering link:http://
targetedwebsite.com.

Note: that for Yahoo you must include http://

Anchor Text used - is the actual text used within the link
linking to the specified website. For example, the anchor text
in the following link would be “health food”. Health food
website

Page Rank -is the actual Google Page Rank of the webpage linking
to targetedwebsite.com. In order to see the Google Page Rank,
you’ll need to download and install the Google Toolbar for free
from: http://toolbar.google.com

Link Popularity -is the number of links that are pointing to
each of the webpages pointing to targetedwebsite.com. The more
the merrier. You can find their Google link popularity by
entering this search command into Google:
link:www.targetedwebsite.com then counting the total number of
results that are shown OR you could go to a website like
www.linkpopularity.com to find each link partners link
popularity much more quickly.

Page Title - is the title of the page that is linking to
targetedwebsite.com. Does it contain the main keyword(s) for
your niche? If so, you should note the url (web address) of
those pages. You’ll want to approach those websites and try to
get them to link to your website.

* Getting links from webpages that contain your main keyword in
the page title is extremely powerful and is something many
people often overlook.

Number of Outbound Links – is the number of links located on the
webpage linking to targetedwebsite.com. The fewer links there
are located on the page, the more a link from them would
increase your ranking.

Once we’ve collected all of the information, we now can see
targetedwebsite.com’s linking strategy. We’ll need to calculate
the percentage of websites that contain the main
keywords/phrases in the page title, the percentage of websites
that contain the main keywords in the actual anchor text linking
to targetedwebsite.com.

You’ll have to do this for the top 10-20 websites in your
keyword niche in order to properly establish the most beneficial
websites to seek link exchanges with.

The most beneficial sites will be those that:

Allow you to specify the anchor text that will be used in their
link to your website.

Websites with a PR OF 4 or more – don’t get too hung up on page
rank though.

Websites that will preferably carry your link in a relevant
page. Failing that, a website that has a well-organized links
page with a visible and hopefully prominent link in the
navigation bar, so that visitors can find it easily.

Should the website use a special links page, then ensure that it
carries no more than 30 links, otherwise the PR benefit from
that links page will be so diluted as make it worthless. Also,
there’ll be too many links competing with yours to get any
significant traffic boost.

Making Your Link Request

Now that you have established the websites you want to link
with, you need go out and actually ask them. How you do this
will determine whether your linking campaign will be effective
or not; it would be a great pity to do all the work above only
to mess it up with a shoddy links exchange request.

Firstly, websites that are worth linking to receive hundreds of
link requests. In order to get your request any attention,
prepare well so that it stands out from the crowd. You want to
show the webmaster that you have taken the time to peruse his
website and that your links exchange request is well considered.
You need to convince him/her that your website would make a good
fit with their own, that it is interesting and his/her own
visitors would find it useful and beneficial. You also want to
make it as easy as possible for them to link up with your site.

When you write the links exchange request letter, personalize it
by using the webmaster’s first name if you can find it on
his/her site, make sure you have specified the website’s name,
and note and comply with any instructions the website may have
for exchanging links e.g. a web-based form, a code to cut and
paste on to your site and so on. Failing to do so would not just
be irritating; it shows that you have not really browsed the
site.

Be creative and bold with your email subject header. Being timid
and using a generic subject header like “Link Request” will
probably see your email deleted unread. Explicitly state which
page you’d like your link carried on and why. Oftentimes,
interestingly, you’ll get your links request approved without a
corresponding links exchanged. Some webmasters will consider
either that it may not make sense for them to have their link on
your site, or that your site is a valuable enough addition to
their site without a link in return. Most time though a
reciprocal exchange will result.

Do not balk at approaching your competitors. Since no two
business entities are identical, it is possible for competing
websites to carry each others links and still benefit from the
total traffic carried by all. Imagine sites that sell unique and
therefore hard to find gift items. While obvious competitors, if
a browser fails to find what they’re looking for on one site,
they may find it on the other, and vice-versa.

Page Rank

A word about Page Rank. PR is a measure of a website’s
significance derived and used by certain search engines chiefly
Google. While a positive indicator, you should not get too hung
up on it when identifying link partners. PR is gained and lost
often (every 3 months or so) so current PR is no indicator of
future trends. Further, PR is largely an indicator of link
popularity, is obscure in its derivation, and does not tell you
how suitable a website is as a link partner. Use it as an
indicative measure rather than a deciding factor.

Google PR increases as your link popularity does. Do not worry
that your own new website will have a low PR. This will
invariably increase with more links. More important for the new
website is building links with quality websites many of which
will have low PR anyway, but websites that have the type of
traffic your site needs.

Summary

The process of building links with other websites is
time-consuming at the best of times, and if done correctly can
get quite tedious. However, since it requires communication with
other webmasters, it has the potential to be engaging and
absorbing. Approach it confidently if you are satisfied with
your own site, remembering that even a link that brings you just
5 visitors a day will add up to over 8000 over 5 years.

Every backlink is worth taking time over, and just like your
website itself, is never really finished – they will require
tweaking every so often.

Enjoy