Link Building Strategies for Top Search Engine
Placement
By Dave Davies
-
July 30, 2003
For
many, the idea of optimizing a website for top
search engine placement means entering some
META tags, maybe titling the page appropriately,
and then you’re done. A long time ago,
in an SEO galaxy far FAR away,
this tactic worked. Unfortunately for those
optimizing their websites, and fortunately for
those using search engines to find information,
this is no longer the case.
There
are now some 80+ factors of your website that
are taken into consideration when determining
the ranking of your website. Everything from
titles and META’s to content and ALT tags
are weighed and analyzed when your placement
on the search engines is determined. In a recent
article by Ross Dunn, CEO of StepForth Search
Engine Placement, he addressed the fundamentals
of optimizing your web pages. The article he
wrote was entitled “A Ten Minute Search
Engine Optimization” and can be found
here.
This
article addresses many of the internal factors
taken into account in determining your ranking.
Another factor which has to be taken very seriously
is the external links to your website. Links
to your site are not the most important factor
in determining your ranking and you will have
to have a well-optimized site to rank well,
however, when all else is equal (i.e. when your
competitors also have well-optimized sites)
this can be the determining factor between being
found and being buried in the search engine
rankings.
Links
That Work
The first consideration you have to make in
your link-building efforts is who should be
linking to you and whom you should link to.
These are two separate considerations and despite
that fact that you will be working on both at
the same time, they must be considered independently.
Who
Should Link To You? (Incoming Links)
When you are looking for sites to link to you
there are five questions that you must ask yourself:
- Do
they compete with you? While
you can try to request a link from a site
that provides the same or similar products
and services that you do, this is generally
a waste of time that could be spent finding
legitimate links from sites that would like
to promote your product or service.
- Does
their site relate to your content?
If you have a site promoting carpet cleaning
products, a link from a hair salon will not
be of much benefit. Google and the other major
search engines look for content relationship
when determining the value of a link. If the
content of the two sites is totally unrelated
the link is given very little weight if any.
Focus only on attaining links from sites relevant
to your own.
- How
does Google rate the site? Google
has come out with a fantastic tool called
the Google Toolbar. The advanced version of
the toolbar includes the PageRank of the site
you are currently visiting. Without getting
into a long description of PageRank (see
Google’s definition), the higher
the number the better (it is a ranking out
of 10 where traditionally anything above 4
is good and anything above 6 is excellent.
If Google rates the site well then the link
will be more valued than from a site that
Google rates poorly. When looking for links
give more time and attention to those with
PageRanks of 4 or higher. The Google Toolbar
is a free download available from Google at
http://toolbar.google.com/.
- Will
they require a reciprocal link?
Whether the site will require a reciprocal
link or not is a serious consideration. The
more links to your site that you have that
are not reciprocated the better. These links
are given added weight. This area will be
addressed further below.
- How
many links on the page? How
many links are on the page that will link
to you, and where your link will be placed
is another serious consideration. If your
link from their site will be on a page with
100 other links then the value of the link
itself is greatly reduced. Also, whether your
link will be on the top of the page or the
bottom will also determine the value of the
link itself.
This
may be a lot to consider, however it can save
you enormous amounts of time and frustration.
People will often work for hours to attain a
link from a site they like when in reality the
site has a low PageRank and the link won’t
even carry much weight as far as search engine
placement is concerned.
It
is only responsible to note that as a general
rule any relevant inbound link will help somewhat.
If, in your travels, you find a related site
with a PageRank of 2 that is very simple to
get a link from, it’s well worth your
time to do so given that that time taken is
only about 5 minutes. Not all link building
is this simple and it’s in the more advanced
efforts (email communications with the webmaster
for example) that you will want to apply the
above noted “rules”.
Who
Should You Link To? (Outgoing Links)
The question, “who should you link to?”
is a very serious one and can have significant
repercussions on your search engine placement.
If you are linking to sites this is your way
of saying, “This site is highly relevant
to mine and that my visitors will enjoy the
content on it.” For this reason there
are a number of considerations that have to
be made when determining whether reciprocal
links are in your best interest. Factors of
the website that should be considered when determining
whether to link to that website are:
- Is
the site’s content related to yours?
Like incoming links (sites linking to you),
the relevancy of the content on both sites
should be high. If you have a number of links
from your site to websites that are completely
unrelated to you’re the value of these
links is negligible and further, will reduce
the perceived value of your site.
- Does
the site compete with you? In
this case it is your interests, not those
of the other webmaster, which must be taken
into account. Do you want to link to a site
that provides the same or similar products/services
as you? Unless the site is willing to reciprocate
the link and they have a very high PageRank
it is probably not wise to give your visitors
the opportunity to go to the site of a competitor.
- What
is their PageRank? Many people
falsely believe that any outbound link will
hurt your placement. This is simply not the
case. Poor link-building is the cause of this
misconception, not the link itself. When you
are determining whether to link to another
site, take a look at the PageRank it has been
assigned by Google. Like the boost this gives
to your site in the incoming links, so to
can this have a positive effect on your outbound
links. If all of your outbound links are to
highly regarded sites (by the search engines)
and whose content is relevant to yours then
these links will help, and not hinder your
rankings.
Finding
The Links
Since you’re looking for links to boost
your search engine placement, the best place
to start is… the search engines. A few
searches should produces hundreds of potential
links. There are a few tactics that work better
than others. The first tactic provides the best
links for their relevancy and for their PageRank.
The second provides the best results for getting
many links quickly and easily.
Getting
High Quality Links –
The easiest way to get high quality links that
will be well regarded by Google and the other
search engines is to perform a search on the
major search engines for your targeted keyword
phrases. The supplied results will provide you
with a list of those sites that the engine rates
as the top sites for that phrase. If the engines
believe this to be of value for searches looking
for a particular phrase then likewise, they
will view it as a valuable link to your site,
which obviously deals with the same subject.
You
don’t have to stick to your main targeted
keyword phrase either. In this stage of link
building you can run searches on all the keyword
phrases that you are targeting and request that
they link to your site. You will have to obey
the above-noted guidelines and this will mean
that there will be many sites you will have
to skip, as they are competitors of yours.
Getting
Many Links –
Getting many links is not as difficult as getting
high-quality links. Some of the same rules apply
here. You will want the site to be related to
yours, you will want it to be well-regarded
by the search engines, and you will want it
to be easy to submit to. To accomplish this,
the easiest way is to once again turn to the
search engines. This time however, the search
will be a little bit different.
Rather
than typing in the keyword phrase you are targeting
you should type in the keyword phrase followed
by the words “submit” or “add
url”. What this will give you is a listing
of sites related to your keywords but also with
an added bonus; a submission page. Sites that
advertise their submissions are traditionally
easier to submit to (i.e. they probably have
a simple form to fill out rather than you having
to email webmasters, etc.).
You’ll
be surprised at how many of these sites will
link to you without the need for a reciprocal
link. If the form is easy then submit to it.
If the form will require significant efforts
to fill out (requiring information you don’t
have on hand for example) or if they require
a reciprocal link you will have to use the above-noted
guidelines to determine if the effort is worth
your time and/or outbound link.
Build
Quality – And They Will Link
Why would anyone link to your website without
requiring a reciprocal link? What benefit do
they possibly get out of this? The answers to
these questions depends greatly on the website,
it’s design, and the content it carries.
The
most significant factor that will affect your
ability to attain incoming links to your website
is the quality of the site itself. If you have
a well-designed website that contains a significant
amount of useful content it will be much easier
to get other webmasters to link to you as your
site is a valuable resource. If, however, your
site is poorly designed and/or does not contain
any useful information then you have provided
nothing that the other site would need to link
to, and thus, probably won’t.
If
you have a website on Tea
Tree Oil for example, and in it you provided
a great deal of information on the oil, it’s
benefits, and it’s medicinal uses, without
cluttering it with a glaring sales-pitch, you
stand a very good chance of attaining links
from other sites as the content you have provided
will be useful to their visitors.
An
important thing to remember is this: If you
want people to link to you without having to
link to them you have to provide valuable information
for their visitors and present that information
in an attractive format.
Where
To Start
The easiest place to start, when building non-reciprocating
incoming links, is the directories. There are
thousands of directories out there focused on
a variety of different fields. Find the directories
related to your industry and submit your site
to them.
After
you have submitted to all the directories related
to your website it’s time to move on to
other sites. Now you will have to apply the
rules noted above and determine how much time
each link is worth and how to allot your valuable
time in attaining them.
Best
Practices For Outbound Links
There are a few considerations you will want
to make in regards to how you organize the outbound
links from your website. The most important
thing to do is to create a “Resources
Page”. You should call it a “Resources
Page” or something similar rather than
a “Links Page” for both search engine
considerations and for your visitors.
Placing
the majority of your outbound links on one page
will avoid inadvertently affecting the optimization
and search engine considerations taken with
the rest of your website and gives you a place
to place new links as they come in the future.
Each
outbound link should look something like the
following example linked from an adventure tour
web site:
Tea
Tree Oil Exposed
Everything you wanted to know about Tea Tree
Oil! From its history to its many uses, Tea
Tree Oil is a requirement for any home first
aid kit.
Each
link should have descriptive text within it
(not something ambiguous like ‘click here’)
and there should be a quality description of
the web site below the link. If you don’t
know what to include as the description, just
ask the site owner, they are often very pleased
that you are putting so much care into the reciprocal
link.
Something
you will also want to do is have the outbound
links open in a new window. It’s surprising
the number of websites that don’t do this.
If you can keep a visitor in your site, even
if your site is now in a browser beneath the
one being looked at, you stand a higher chance
that the visitor will return than if they have
completely left your site and you’re now
relying on them to go back.
Conclusion
With these practices put in place your link-building
efforts, while time-consuming, will be well
worth the effort. As mentioned above, however,
link-building, like META tags, are not the end-all
and be-all of attaining top search engine placement.
First you will have to build a marketable and
optimized web site that provides your visitors
valuable content for the search terms they are
entering. Link building is the icing. Without
the cake it amounts to nothing.
Dave Davies
StepForth
Placement Inc.
1358 Gladestone Ave
Victoria, BC V8R 1S1
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