Irish Website Design Ireland

I just wanted to follow up with you guys on the previous link building article (Quality Link Building Made Easy).

A Quick Recap

I received a link exchange request from a marketer in one of my niches. He was building links for his client and offered me a link from his purpose built link exchange blog in return for a link to his clients site. This is called three-way linking. A link from his blog was of little value to me but the list of other link partners on his blog was. The vast majority of these sites are legitimate businesses, in the same niche or directly related niche to mine, and they have all exchanged links with the marketer that contacted me. This is IMPORTANT as it means there is a high probability that they will exchange links with me.

This is good, because I don’t have to search these possible link partners out, my marketer friend did all that work for me . All I have to do is ask this list of websites for a link exchange to my website.

Action

So I made list of the sites I wanted to request a reciprocal link from and checked to see if they had a ‘links’ or ‘partners’ or ‘resources’ page where they would place my link. So, using a template email (similar to the example I provided in the previous link building blog post), I emailed each website requesting a reciprocal link,  32 sites in total. Three emails bounced (their emails were not active) and one website required that I set-up a free account with  them before I could exchange links – which I did not do. Link building is so time consuming that you just need to cut out the extra work and move on to the next link prospect…so that left 28 active link exchange requests.

Results

Over the following two weeks or so, I received 13 confirmed link exchanges. This is almost 50% success rate, and with time that could be improved upon. It can take time to see the results of these link exchanges, so don’t become disheartened. The trick is to continue building links on a regular basis and in time the additional traffic and page-rank will come.

More On Link Building

This is an example of two-way reciprocal link building, and I mentioned three-way link building too. There are more methods of building links back to your website which we’ll cover in a future article.

Plugins That Make The Web Better

If you’re familiar with WordPress for blogging or website needs, then you’ll know just how powerful WordPress it. It is extremely versitile in it’s application and with the use of plugins the possibilities are limited only by our imaginations.

I’ve compiled a list of great WordPress plugins that I use regularly in client and personal websites. If you have a WordPress website, why not install some and play around with them, you may find something you love!

9 Popular WordPress Plugins

All in One SEO Pack
Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress
Another tool to help your site keep the search engines updated and coming back to index. This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

Easy Privacy Policy
Easy Privacy Policy is an all in one solution for making sure that your blog has an adsense compliant privacy policy that is easy to setup as well as quick to tailor to your specific requirements not covered by the default templates. In fact its so easy once its activated you are only a couple of clicks away from a privacy policy for your site.

Twitter Tools 1.6
Twitter Tools is a WordPress plugin that allows you to do a two-way integration between your WordPress powered blog and Twitter.

Download Counter for WordPress

• Keeps track of the amount of downloads of a certain file.
• Keeps track of the last download time
• Allows you to reset the counter
• Allows you to add counters to both internal and external urls
• Can use fancy urls (like /downloads/file.zip)
• Can print the amount of downloads, the filesize and the last modified date in a post.

WordPress Backup
Wordpress Backup is an essential plugin for all WordPress blog administrators by the Blog Traffic Exchange. It performs regular backups of your upload (images) current theme, and plugin directories. Backup files are available for download and optionally emailed to a specified email. Don’t get caught without a recent backup of your theme or images or plugins.

WP125: Easy 125×125 Ad Management For WordPress
The WP125 plugin can help you manage your ads more efficiently, leaving you with more time to write new posts. The plugin adds a new “Ads” menu to the WordPress admin, featuring submenus for tweaking display settings and adding and removing ads.

Absolute Privacy by John Kolbert
Turns your blog into the ultimate private blog.

Insights
Insights brings a powerful new way to write your blog posts. It increases productivity and at the same time the appeal of your posts. Well worth testing for those who suffer bloggers-block!

Want More Plugins?

Check out the WordPress Plugins Directory…You’ll be “like a kid in a candy store!”

Enjoy!

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Need A County Enterprise Board Website Grant Quote?

If you are looking for a website price quote for a static brochure website then you’ve come to the right place.

Many business people seek assistance from the County Enterprise Boards to set-up their first website. If you qualify for a website grant towards the cost of your new website you will be asked to submit up to three or four website quotations. This can be a daunting task if you’re not exactly sure what type of website you need. Also, of course there is the ‘web designer lingo’ you’d sometimes need a technical dictionary to understand!

The other problem is you can find yourself spending more time trying to get the website price quotes than you spend thinking about your website and business.

To make you’re life easier Starter Websites are happy to provide a quote for people who are applying for County Enterprise Board website grants. Give me a call (Peter 087 9767812) to discuss your requirements and we’ll email you a quotation to help you fulfil your website grant application requirements.

(Be sure to check out our website prices and website packages first so you know what packages we offer.)

Take care,
Peter.