Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website
Step Eight – Link Building
Welcome to part eight in this search
engine positioning series. Last week we discussed website submissions.
In part eight we will be covering the importance of link building
and developing inbound links to your website.
This is arguably on of the most important aspect of the SEO process
and can mean the difference between first page rankings and 100th.
It has to be done right and it has to be done on an ongoing basis.
Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search
engine positioning campaign.
The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:
- Keyword
Selection - October 24, 2004
- Content
- October 31, 2004
- Site
Structure - November 7, 2004
- Optimization
- November 14, 2004
- Internal
Linking - November 21, 2004
- Human
Testing - November 29, 2004
- Submissions
- December 5, 2004
- Link Building
- December 12, 2004
- Monitoring
- December 19, 2004
- The Extras - December
28, 2004
Step Eight – Link Building
Link building: it’s pretty much understood that this is a
critical component when you’re trying to attain top search
engine positioning, however the confusion enters when it’s
time to decide exactly what you should do.
From talk about reciprocal link building one might come to believe
that this is the golden egg of SEO. While reciprocal link building
can definitely be beneficial to your rankings, it is far from the
only or even the best method. In this article we will cover the
following link-building tactics:
- Reciprocal link building
- Directory listings
- Non-reciprocal link building tactics
- Tools to maximize your efforts
And so, without further ado …
Reciprocal Link Building
Reciprocal link building is the trading of links between two websites.
Essentially it's an “I’ll post yours if you’ll
post mine” sort of arrangement. There are many sites out there
that will essentially link to any-and-all sites willing to link
to them. This is not a good practice.
While purely speculation at this point, there is significant debate
in the SEO community regarding how search engines might be altering
their algorithms to take into account a Webmaster or SEO’s
ability to manipulate their rankings with reciprocal links. Whether
or not these speculations are true currently, they are most certainly
being integrated if they have not be already.
Essentially, the search engines need to protect themselves and
provide relevant results to their users. While inbound links as
part of search engine algorithms is certainly here to stay, the
way these links are calculated changes constantly and in reaction
to the current environment and also in prediction of future developments,
the way we build them too must evolve.
There are some basic rules to follow when exchanging links:
- Relevancy is more important than PageRank
- Check and make sure the recips aren’t being blocked
- Link pages with more than 50 links aren’t worth exchanging
with
- Prepare for the future
Relevancy
Many Webmasters focus only on the PageRank of a website when deciding
whether to exchange links with it. Without a doubt PageRank is important
however more important is whether or not that website’s content
is related to yours. There are two reasons for this:
- The algorithms are changing to take into consideration the relevancy
of links. A link from a relevant PageRank 3 page will be considered
more valuable than a PageRank 5 link from a totally unrelated
site. Some predict that unrelated links will soon be given little
or no weight whatsoever.
- Believe it or not, Google is not the only search engine. PageRank
is Google’s ranking of the value of a site. What Google
gives a 3 out of 10, Yahoo! may give more weight to.
Basically, after a series of tests we have determined that links
to related sites will never hinder your rankings. With this in mind
feel free to link to any site you think your visitors would naturally
be interested in if they are at your site.
Blocked Recips
Unethical website owners (or their SEOs) will sometimes block the
links backs from search engine spiders. Be this in an effort to
attain what appear to be one-way links as opposed to reciprocal,
or simply to make their website appear to have fewer outbound links,
this is not ethical and it certainly won’t help you.
When you’re looking at a potential link exchange page, check
the source code for the robots tag. If it’s set to “noindex,nofollow”
then the page is being blocked and the link won’t help at
all.
Some wiser webmasters will use the robots.txt file to block search
engine spiders. If you look for robots.txt at the root of the domain
(i.e. at http://www.domaininquestion.com/robots.txt) you will see
the files/folders that are being blocked. Look for the links pages
and/or the directory these pages are in, in this list. If you find
it, then don’t exchange links with them.
A new one I’ve recently found along this tangent is to draw
the links from a script and to block the script and database folders
from the search engines. The files won’t show up in the excluded
list but the links won’t be counted. To detect this the easiest
thing to do is to view the cache of the page. If the page is cached
but none of the links appear and the script directory is listed
in the robots.txt file then this tactic is being used. Again, don’t
bother exchanging links.
If you find Webmasters employing any of these tactics they are
unethical. Unethical Webmasters shouldn’t be rewarded with
high PageRanks or good results. If you have the time and inclination
you may want to email those websites listed on the page (heck, they
may be good recip link partners anyway) and let them know what’s
going on. You’ll be doing them a favor and they’ll probably
be happy to exchange links with you as well.
Link Pages With More than 50 Links
Webmasters who are trying to actually do their link partners a
favor will limit their links pages to 50 links (the lower the better).
The reason for this is that every page gets one vote. A link to
another website counts as a vote for that site. This is why it can
help improve rankings. As each page only gets one vote a link from
a page with 10 links counts at 0.1 of a vote, whereas a link from
a page with 100 links counts as 0.01 of a vote. Anything past about
100 links is not counted at all.
Additionally, the higher up on a page your link appears the more
weight it is given. If the page lists sites alphabetically try to
insure that your title begins with a number or a letter early in
the alphabet (which works well for companies like “Beanstalk
Search Engine Positioning”).
Prepare For The Future
Just because a rule applies today does not mean that it will tomorrow.
This is true in on-site SEO as well as link building. If generic
recip links work today, consider whether you believe it’s
in the best interest of your targeted engine to keep it this way.
As the answer will undoubtedly be “no” it’s in
your best interest to insure that you take the extra time to build
links that will still be valuable months and even a year from now
to save yourself a drop in the rankings and additional work later.
Directory Listings
Having your website listed in quality directories is perhaps one
of the most valuable things you can do for it in regards to inbound
links. Directories link DMOZ
and Yahoo! hold
significant weight. Google draws it’s directory results from
DMOZ and Yahoo! draws it’s directory results from, well, Yahoo!.
These links are given a lot of weight.
Make sure that you submit your website to both of these directories
and if they’re not listed a couple months down the road, try
again (and you may want to try a slightly different category if
a relevant one exists, as you may have hit one of the many overworked
editors who’s getting behind).
Aside from these two there are literally thousand of other directories
our there. Look for others and submit your site. Some may charge
a fee. If this is the case, take a look at the page your site would
be listed on, take a look at the PageRank, the number of outbound
links on the page and determine whether it’s worth the price.
I’ve seen directories charging $10 for a permanent PageRank
5 link on a page with 3 other outbound links (though this number
is certain to grow over time). Well worth the $10 investment.
You can find may great directories using search engines and, of
course, the major directories. For example, were I looking for topical
directories a great place to start would be http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Directories/
in the Google directory.
Non-Reciprocal Link Building Tactics
There are a number of other tactics for building non-reciprocal
links. Here we will outline three of the most popular:
- Articles
- Press Releases
- Paid Links
Articles
Writing articles is a great way of getting inbound links and generating
quality traffic. Articles give you the opportunity to control the
content on the linking page meaning that you can guarantee that
it is totally relevant, it’s a one-way link, and it’s
a link that you’ll actually get traffic from.
Let’s assume that you run a small computer shop. Why not
write an article about how to troubleshoot a common Windows problem
(no no, it’s true … Windows can be a bit buggy every
now and then). The next step is to simply find places to submit
your article to and do just that. From experience I would highly
recommend keeping a list in your favorites of the sites you submit
to. If you decide to publish another article you probably don’t
want to have to find them all from scratch again.
If you were looking for places to submit to you would run searches
on the major search engines for “my topic articles”
(in this case a search for “windows errors articles”
and “computer troubleshooting articles” would be great
places to start). If you find a lot of results only post their own
articles you may want to add the word “submit” to the
string.
Press Releases
Press releases are another great way to attain one-way inbound
links. If you have news that you feel worth telling, submit a press
release about it. While you’ll probably want to manually submit
your site to the key online publishers, services such as PRWeb
exist to submit your press release to a large audience at a very
reasonable price.
Like articles, if the news is good you’re likely to get quality
traffic from a press release and on top of that, you are likely
to get some good, related links to your website.
Paid Links
Paid links are links from other websites purchased solely for the
value of the link rather than for direct clicks. Paid links have
become so popular that auction sites have sprouted up for just this
purpose and they can even be bought on eBay.
There is no particular problem with paid links per-se however I
would recommend applying the same criteria that you would to reciprocal
links. If you are going to purchase links, only purchase them from
related sites and try to make sure the link is not buried down at
the bottom of the page.
Run-of-site links (links that appear on every page) are not significantly
more valuable than single links on the homepage other than for the
traffic. If you’ve purchased a link in a good location and
on a good site you’re likely to get some good traffic from
it. In fact, this is the general rule I go into any paid link arrangement
with – purchase the link for the traffic. If the link increases
my PageRank it’s a great bonus but if I’ve bought the
link for the traffic and I’m getting it, then the link value
becomes secondary.
Link Building Tools
Because link building has become so important to improve search
engine positioning, a number of great tools have been developed
to help in the process. While I couldn’t possible list them
all here there have been two developments by a company named TopNet
Solutions than have truly impressed me and which are the only tools
that I use in every link building campaign.
PR
Prowler
PR Prowler from TopNet Solutions searches the web based on your
specific criteria providing results with a minimum PageRank that
you determine. A very handy tool for your link-building efforts.
Total
Optimizer Pro
When we first purchased PR Prowler we thought we'd found the ultimate
link building tool. That was, until we found Total Optimizer Pro.
Made by the same folks who put out PR Prowler this tool rips apart
and tells you everything there is to know about your competitor's
backlinks, the anchor text used to link to them, the PageRank distribution
of their incoming links and much more.
If you have any questions about these tools or how they are used
feel free to contact
us. I’m happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Next Week
Next week in part nine of our "Ten Steps To an Optimized Website"
series we will be covering the importance of monitoring. This isn’t
simply checking the rankings of your primary phrase every now and
then but a scheduled check of all the key components on your optimization
and search engine positioning efforts.
Click here to go
to the next article in the series.
If you have any questions about keyword selection or your website
in general please feel free to contact
us for additional information or sign up for our free search
engine positioning review.
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