Creating a Personalized Website Linking Strategy

The idea of a successful link building campaign is to create content on your website or blog which other people will want to link to. Links work in two ways to generate visitors to your website. First, they bring traffic from other websites to yours, and second they count as referrals in Google’s algorithm, and will increase your overall search rankings.

Importance of Links

Once you’ve gotten your website keyword strategy working, there is a lot of work to do on the internet. The reason for this is the importance that most search engines place on links. Search engines use links from other sites much as we would use referrals and references when we are shopping or researching something. The search bot can not ask questions or make deductions, so it does not always do a great job of deciding what a site is really about, or whether it is a valuable resource for searchers. Google and other search engines solve this problem by using other sites (especially ones which have strict human editing guidelines) which link to your site, to decide what your site is really about, and whether it is worthwhile. So it is very important that other people link to your site and write about your site. It raises your search ranking.

You can check to see how many other sites link to your site with this command: link: www.mysite.com. After you look to see how many sites are linking to you, you might want to check your competitors to see what sites are linking to them. You may see that your competitors have partnered with websites providing complementary products or services, or you might find that they have been publishing a series of interesting articles, or that they have a contest running. You can also ask all the sites which link to your competitors if they will also link to you.

This may sound like an endeavor that is very time consuming. However, linking is NOT a waste of your time. Here are the three main reasons why you need a strategy.

• You will receive more overall traffic because once you get a link from a site, it usually lasts. As you increase the number of links pointing to your site, you will also increase traffic, and this traffic will continue to come every month.
• Your site will increase in search rankings because it will appear more “popular” to search engine algorithms. You can see how popular your site is with Googloe by downloading the google toolbar or using a tool like this: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php As you increase the links to your site, your Google PR will also increase.
• It makes good sense to seek links from companies with related products or services because you can view this as a traditional business partnership. It allows your company to provide products and services that you currently do not, meeting more of your valuable customer’s requirements.

Anatomy of a Link

A link should be written in text, not graphics, so search engines can read them. The main part of the link is the anchor tag that refers to the URL address.

The option target="_blank" is used so that the link opens up in another browser, leaving the linking website open to the visitor.

As far as I know, it is not possible to open a link in another “tab” on the same browser session.

The text that “shows” to the visitor should include the keyword phrase you are trying to increase rankings for.

The link description is not really as important to the search engine, but should be related to that keyword phrase. It is important because a visitor will read it like an advertisement and determine whether to click over to your website.

Use keywords in your “anchor text.”

Search engines and Google in particular place a high level of importance on the text in your link. It's one of the most powerful and yet most overlooked part of any linking strategy.

These are two examples of links pointing to call centers.

A: United Answering Free Trial - 24/7 Call Center Answering Service, Order Processing

B: Spanish Speaking Call Centers Spanish Speaking Call Centers : Talk2Rep Call Centers Specializing in Spanish Language Services.

Example B is much better than example A. In A, "United Answering" is the text displayed in the link. This means that sites using this link text are saying "this site is a good resource for United Answering".

However in the second example we have "Spanish Speaking Call Centers" as the link or "anchor text" and so sites that link this way are saying "this site is a good resource for Spanish Speaking Call Centers"!

If you have done your keyword research correctly, your links will raise your popularity on your desired keywords. If you choose your anchor text unwisely then it could take you forever to play catch up with your competitors. If they have been gaining links for several years then you have a lot of catch up to do. In order to catch up quickly, you will have to choose different keywords, and increase your overall popularity.

It should be starting to become apparent that your goal is to get as many relevant websites as possible to link to you.

You can help this along with several different types of requests for links. Ask your partners, vendors, clients and industry portals to link to your site. Make a list of every website that relates to your products or services but is not a direct competitor. Then find their email addresses. Write a brief email suggesting a link exchange.

It makes a difference where the link to your site is located.

The more links that are on a page, the less "linking power" will be assigned to each link on the page. So if you get a link from a page with 75 links on it, it won’t give you much of a boost in popularity or traffic because your link is competing with 74 other links.

Links from a home page of another website provide the most impact because they usually have the most popularity score. However it is often difficult to convince another website to link to yours from their home page.

Places/Ways You Can Get Links

Directories are relatively easy ways to get links to your websites. The most important free directory entry is http://www.dmoz.org but it can take a long time for your link to appear, since it is a “human” directory. Seek out directories and place your links at every opportunity. Industry portals are a great linking source.

Another relatively easy way to get great links is to write an article. The technique is to write an article of five to six hundred words on a subject that you are knowledgeable about. Next you post this article in free article sites, and other people’s web pages, with a link back to your site. In the article you don’t want to promote your company or products as much as you want to inform people about a subject. You can use your author bio to link back to your website.

Many people have added article or blog sections to their websites to post these articles on their own sites as well.

Reciprocal linking is important in your linking campaign. By linking to other sites of similar interest to your visitor you provide a service and in return you get a link back to your site for your trouble. It's a win/win situation.

When you swap links, try to get links from pages displaying content, rather than getting a link from a page which list lots of websites. Also, try to create value for your customers when listing links to other sites.

Some people purchase links to their websites, to quickly get ranked. You can artificially enhance your page rank so that you will be able to swap links until your site is big enough to stand on its own two feet and compete. Then the paid links can be dispensed with. The only problem with this is that paid links can be very expensive. A single front page text link from a high page rank site can cost $2,000 per link.

Link Bait

One of the easiest ways to get links is to have great content on your site. Many people call this “Link Bait”. You can write articles containing lists of “best” or “worst” categories and other reference lists. You can show the results of surveys. You can publish news. You can join your local chamber of commerce or the Better Business Bureau. Submit your site to government resource lists. Put an add in Craigslist, use Yahoo Answers, Google Groups, Squidoo, and other wiki sites. You can post responses in forums and blogs with your website in your signature. You can hold a contest, offer a free tool, free samples or a picture gallery. There are literally thousands of ways to offer link bait.

What is 3 Way Linking?

Some webmasters own multiple sites and try to build up one of their specific sites by offering link exchanges from their other sites. In doing this they add a link to you on their other site and get you to link to the main site they are trying to build up.

Many search algorithms may be able to detect link trading as an artificial means of boosting the popularity of both sites and discount the value of these links.

By doing a three way link from sites hosted on different servers a webmaster can build link popularity without the search engine being able to detect the link trading as easily.

Since this is basically manipulating the search algorithm, it is advisable to stay away from 3-Way Link Exchanges.

All Links Are Not Created Equal

Since the search engines factor in the page rank of the webpage that links to your website, and they factor in the number of links on that page, it makes sense that just getting more links to your website is not enough. You need to get high quality links.

Many .EDU and .GOV sites become “hub” or originating sites, and links from them are highly valued. Links originating from hub-site will receive a boost in popularity. The Yahoo directory is another great example of a Hub Link.

Link Building Tools

• Arelis Link Builder reciprocal links solution from Axandra/Voget Selbach Enterprises
• Zeus Internet Robot automatic reciprocal link generator and link directory creator from Cyber-robotics.
• One free tool you can use is Tilman Hausherr's Xenu's Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html). It analyzes all your links to make sure they work. It provides a limited text file of links to you.

Remember that your SEO is not complete without a good, on-going link building strategy. It is time well-spent.