By Dave Davies
Contributing Writer
Article Date:
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 on the StepForth website at http://www.webpronews.com/wpn-LinkBuildingForTopSearchEnginePlacement.html.
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.
First aid kit for the back in hazmat spill kit at cintas locking first aid stations.
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
linksin 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.
About the Author:
Dave Davies is the marketing manager for StepForth Search Engine Placement
Inc. Visit them online at http://www.stepforth.com
