All webmasters should make adding new original content to their sites and building
more and more links from other quality websites a part of their monthly maintenance. All of the major search
engines use incoming links as a significant ranking factor. Adding content enhances a site's search engine
ranking potential in several different ways, including adding quality internal links. Google's ranking
system pays particular attention to the quality of incoming links. Their scheme is based on
a formula called "PageRank" which was developed by the company founders while they were students
at Stanford University in California. Links are the foundation of the World Wide Web, and so links are
simply and undeniably the fundamental basis for all users finding your website directly, or indirectly through
search engines. Unless you have at least one high quality link from a well-ranked webpage, your
site will not be listed in the major search engines.
While we all ideally prefer to obtain unsolicited links originating on similarly-themed
websites simply because other website owners think their readers would like to see our content,
directory websites are also an excellent source of links and user traffic. Start by
registering your website at The Open Directory Project at http://dmoz.org. The
Open Directory Project is a non-profit website operated by America Online through their Netscape
division. Unlike a search engine, The Open Directory Project is edited by humans who evaluate
each website for worthiness. They can be maddeningly slow to accept or reject your entry, but a
listing there is of significant benefit because they allow other websites to republish their
directory (ie. a practice that is sometimes referred to as "mirroring"). These mirrors
do not provide the enormous link benefits that they did in years gone by, but its native link
"oomph" is still worth seeking. The rule with The Open Directory Project is to submit
and forget. Re-submitting puts your submission back at the end of the line, so don't make that
mistake. This is a long-term investment of three minutes of your time. Noted Google engineer Matt
Cutts offers some help on his blog for Getting Links
that offers some sage advice for improving your site so that it attracts links naturally.
There are thousands of other directories out there as well, just
waiting for you to ask for a listing. Go find them. They'll often require an exchange
of links, but this is a small price to pay. Try searching on your favorite search engine
for your main keywords and the word "directory." If you don't find anything
right away, check out the lists of directory sites in The Open Directory Project. These
are not always powerful links either, but they all help build a web of themed links
that define your site as being related to your primary topic(s). More and more, the
search engines are looking for linguistic clues to the relevance of the content of
sites to specific keyword searches that are not constrained by simply examining link
text (which is an important topic we'll get to later). For many websites, their target
audience is based on location - a specific state, city, or neighborhood. For them, listing
in local directories can be invaluable as not simply a quality on-theme link, but for the
simple ability of these directories to provide traffic from that target audience.
The time-honored practice of reciprocal links is still one of the simplest
methods of obtaining links. The search engines are becoming more and more resistant to the
effects of these links, but they do still have a place in your search engine marketing aresenal.
You should ideally seek to exchange links with other quality websites whose main topic is related to
yours. As I mentioned before, the search engines are starting to look beyond simply counting
the raw numbers of links to include the relevance of the sites in question. Naturally,
this means you must have already prepared a page on your own website where you can post
the other parties' links in return. Search for your most important keywords and compile a list
of the websites you find. Visit each website on the list so you can evaluate it as a possible
link partner and then locate the contact information for the website's webmaster. Then contact the
webmasters of those websites you like and invite them to exchange links. When I'm helping a new
website get established in the major search engines like Google, I usually start their link exchange
campaign by contacting the websites listed in the 15th or 20th rankings because I know they'll
likely be hungrier for links than the websites that are already near the top. If you're reluctant
to contact direct competitors, try close offshoots. I'm working with a friend who sculpts neon lights
into works of art, so I'm contacting sites dealing with home/office room decor. I was once helping
another site that sells two specific lines of scrapbooking supplies, so I'll check out hobby and art
crafts sites for linking leads. And so it goes.
Once you spot a candidate, check their website for a
links page. There should be a link to it on the site's main page. If
they don't have one up and running, you'll not only have to convince
them to exchange links, but also create a new page for it. If there
is an existing links page, check it out carefully. A page with too many
existing links will help you get into search engines, but the ranking
benefits will be diminished. This is especially true of sites that are
obviously using an automated link exchange system. If you see a site
that has a link directory with dozens of neat categories and thousands of
link partners, its a sign that their link will not help you much, if at all.
Be sure to check out the linking method by viewing the HTML
source of the page where your potential link partner post their links to other
websites. In the eyes of search engines, not all links are created equal. Some
sites route their outgoing links through a CGI program. That is, the HREF
attribute in the <A>nchor tag link will point to a URL similar to:
http://www.theirsite.com/cgi-bin/some_script.cgi?yoursite.com
instead of simply:
http://www.yoursite.com
The only benefit such a link will be is to allow a live visitor to that page eventually reach
your website. It will do you absolutely no good in terms of search engines
because the link doesn't point to your website. Its pointing to theirs.
Any link to your site has value in its potential for sending visitors to your
site, but in such a case you simply have to be aware
that the trade is grossly uneven and make your decision in that light. This principle
applies to both standard websites and directory websites.
If you find a good site that's related to yours that doesn't
have a link exchange page, contact the webmaster anyway and suggest that he
link to your site in an appropriate spot just because it might be useful to his
users. Be open to doing the same when other webmasters contact you. Linking to
good sites is just good practice because it makes your site that much more valuable
to your own users.
Be very careful about joinging programs that are designed to obtain
links for your website "automatically." Many of these programs violate the
search engine's guidelines or Terms of Service and you are putting your website's
search engine ranking in jeopardy by participating in them. I just examined the
website of one such scheme, just to see how they stacked up. The first thing I
check is the website's Google PageRank - in this case it was 0, which is a clear
warning sign that Google doesn't like this scheme. Then I checked to see if the
other major search engines were using this site's internal pages to pick up links.
I was actually astounded to find that none of the major search engines
had any pages from this website in their index whatsoever. That would
have been enough to make me stay far away from this website. But it led me to
another site that offered a directory of websites interested in setting up one-to-one,
webmaster-to-webmaster link exchanges and there's nothing wrong with that.
Make this dreary process easier by creating a
boilerplate message that you can copy and paste into your EMail program when you
send out link exchange invitations to other webmasters. Do yourself a favor: spell-check
AND grammar-check it. It doesn't have to be dry and humorless, but make
it clear that you're serious about the business of running a website.
And even though you're working with a boilerplate message, its always a
good idea to customize it for each recipient webmaster to say why you
would especially value a link from their particular website and how the
link exchange would benefit both of you. And be sure to keep the subject
of your EMail something that isn't likely to be mistakenly deleted as Link SPAM,
which are mass mailings sent out by SEO companies to mindlessly garner links.
I use the simple subject "Invitation To Exchange Links With My (topic) Site". Anything
that sounds hyped or overly cute is unlikely to ever be read in these days
of never-ending torrents of EMail SPAM.
As I said at the beginning, obtaining links should be
considered required routine maintenance. Websites are abandoned all the time, and
their links die with them, so you need to keep your supply fresh and growing.
Its a good idea to periodically check how many websites are linking to yours, and
to be sure your link partners are continuing to fulfill their agreements.
I use Yahoo! to check links because
they don't filter the results as much as Google does. Both Google and Yahoo!
use the same command to check links. Just enter the command word "link:"
followed by the URL for the page whose links you are checking (including the "http://").
Sample Link Invitation
The text in the box below is a boilerplate for you to
use to send EMails to other webmasters inviting them to exchange links with
you. It is a good idea to install the link on your site first to show good
faith and to simply speed the process along. But keep a record of the EMails
you send and check the other websites to make sure that they have kept their
end of the deal. All you have to do to use the message below is to insert the
appropriate information inside the brackets ("[...]"). Just Copy and
Paste.
Affordable Custom ECommerce Website Design