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You have probably already heard of reciprocal linking, where two websites link to each other for mutual benefit, but what about three way linking?

Three way linking can easily be explained in the example below:

 You have three websites - website A, website B and website C.

• Website A links to website B.
• Website B links to website C
• Website C links to website A

As you can see, there is no direct reciprocal link here. Each website is linking to another website, but getting a link back from a different website.

The reason for doing this is because reciprocal links can easily be detected by search engines as “unnatural” links, therefore you won’t get as much benefit from a reciprocal link as you will from a one way link. Doing a three way link exchange makes this look more natural as site A is linking to site B, but getting a link back from site C.

If you decide to use three way linking as a strategy for link building I would recommend only linking to websites that are related to your own website and ensuring that your backlink is coming from a site that is also related. By related, I mean the same theme. So don’t link your home business website to someone’s dieting website.

How do you set up a three way link?

It is easy to set up a three way link if you already have two or more related websites of your own. You can email a webmaster and propose a 3 way link exchange. The disadvantage of this is that it is a manual process and it can be difficult to keep track of your links and be sure that the other webmaster has kept his or her link to your website in place.

Another strategy is to use a three way linking service such as 3 Way Links. This service allows you to automatically set up three way links with other websites. All websites are manually reviewed so you don’t need to worry about linking to bad neighborhoods.

Three way linking is definitely a strategy that you should consider using as part of your overall linking campaign along with other methods such as article distribution, forum posting, directory submission and press releases.

Visit 3 Way Links for more information.

If you are trying to get a higher search engine ranking, you will probably have come across the term “Google Pagerank” or “Google PR” while you have been doing your research. If you are not sure what page rank is or how it can affect your search engine rank, read on for an easy to understand explanation of Google Page Rank and how to get a page rank.

In simple terms a page rank is an indicator of the quality of a particular page on website. By quality I mean the number of links that the web page has pointing to it rather than the actual quality of the content on the page. 

A page rank is a whole number from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest quality and 0 is the lowest. To find out the page rank of a particular page you need to download and install the Google Toolbar which is free. Page Rank applies to a page on a website, not to the whole website.

If the toolbar is grey, this means that a page has no page rank. If your website has pages on it that have a grey toolbar this could mean that

• The page is very new and has not yet been indexed by Google OR
• The page contains duplicate content and is in Google’s supplemental index rather than its main index OR
• Your website has been de-indexed/dropped from Google for some violation (less likely

If the toolbar is white, this means you have a page rank of zero. A PR0 is very common for a new website or a new web page as it take some time to build enough links back to your website to achive a higher page rank. It is also worth noting that Google typically only updates the page rank on the toolbar every few months so if you have a new website it may take  months for page rank to show on the toolbar for your website. However, Google is always updating the page rank of sites on an ongoing basis, so the page rank shown on the toolbar is not a true pagerank, it is a snapshot of your page rank from a given time.

To increase your page rank you need to get high quality backlinks to your website. A backlink is simply a link from another website to your own site. The best way is to get links naturally by writing such good content that other webmaster’s want to link to your website, but in reality most webmasters build backlinks by distributing articles, submitting their website to directories, exchanging links, distributing press releases, commenting on blogs and more. You can find out exactly how to increase your page rank here.

It is not just the number of backlinks to your site that count towards page rank, it is also the quality of these links. So for example, a link from a PR6 page is will increase your chances of getting a higher page rank, more than say, a link from a PR4 page. The number of links on the page that is linking to you also affects how much page rank (also known as “link juice”) is passed on to your web page. A link from a page that has 5 other links on it is of more value than a link from a page with 40 links on it.

Page rank is not linear, so it is much more difficult to get from say a PR4 to a PR5 than it is to get from a PR0 to a PR3.

Google Page Rank plays an important part in how a web page is ranked in Google’s search engine results but it isn’t worth much if you haven’t researched your keywords and optimized your web page. Page rank is a useful indicator of how popular a website is, but it is only part of the equation. So, do take notice of your website’s page rank, but don’t get hung up on that little green bar. The most important thing is that your traffic is increasing, not your page rank.