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Four years ago with very little experience and a lot of time on my hands I was able to put four baby sites and two gift sites on page one of the SERP's for their main keywords. And you know what? It wasn't all that hard, after some very basic on page optimization I started getting link's, mostly reciprocal links and all I had to do to get in the top three of my category was put my main keyword phrase in the link text. That was it, it was so simple!

Then things changed a little the competition figured it out too, everybody knew just put your keyword in your links and presto good rankings. The reciprocal link exchange boom was on. Services sprung up to help get more links faster with less work, automated link software was released etc etc.

I needed another edge so I started buying links, mostly run of site links. I would have the same exact link on 500 or more pages. I would do this with one or two sites and presto I would be right back in the top three. It was great! I could put almost any site I wanted in a top position on Google for a paltry investment of $50 - $100 a month, life was good, especially when you consider that a lot of my competitors were spending that much per day with AdWords for a fraction of the traffic I was getting.

And again the masses found out and the rush was on, site owners would look at their competitors back links and then buy enough run of site links to outdo them. It is inevitable that when that many people find out about something so powerful there's going to be abuse, which attracts attention, especially that of the search engines and when that happens the party is usually over.

So I looked at top ranking site's for terms like shoes, clothes, gifts etc. And I found they all had one thing in common, non-reciprocal link's from content pages. Now I am really excited because all I have to do is get one way links to my site's from relevant content pages. But how am I going to get lots of people to give me a one-way link from a relevant content page?

Then it hit me, create a triangle of sites linking to each other, A would link to B, B would link to C and C would link to A, of course this will solve all my problems. How hard could it be?

VERY HARD!

What a joke. First problem after sending hundreds of e-mails and finally lining up two other relevant sites they wanted to put my link on an overcrowded links page four levels deep. Second problem site owners who insisted that two of their site's be in the triangle but both sites have same IP, what's the point it's just going to look reciprocal to the engines. And then there are the webmasters who have their main domain and a second domain that they have set up just for the purpose of triangle linking, usually the second domain is a "junk domain" meaning they have given it just enough links to show some page rank so that you think your getting a quality exchange. Man what a headache just trying to get one link for one site no way I could do this for all my site's. Just shoot me now and put me out of misery.

Now besides the headaches involved in trying to trick the search engines with schemes and black hat seo, there is a very real risk of having your site banned. It took me several years to figure out, but sometimes its easier to go with the flow and give the search engines what they want, like real and valuable content. It may seem like the slow hard way, but in the end you'll see it's the only way to succeed long term. Next week we'll exam ways to get quality one way links to your site.

About the Author

Mark Dietzel is the founder of Natural Linking which offers help in acquiring links from trusted sources like .edu and .gov sites. You can also read more about Mark and his post at http://www.markdietzel.com