The
prevailing wisdom was that a business website should
not link out to anyone else, if they could help
it. The concept was that you should capture visitors,
hold them hostage, and never, ever cooperate with
anybody else. This has been proven wrong.
What's
interesting, though, is that the purpose and linking
methods that worked well for those niche sites in
the pre-Google days still work well today. It is
important to keep this in focus, as there are now
a lot of people out there who are trying to do this
work using misguided methods, for misguided reasons.
Why Link?
First and foremost, linking should be pursued as
a branding function of your business. If other websites
that are relevant to your business are running link
directories, and offering to list yours for free,
then it makes sense to get your site listed. In
as many of them as possible. That is just basic
Common Sense 101.
In
order to get these links, the accepted protocol
is to first list the other site on your site, then
make the request for a link, using the proper method
of submission (via email or online form, if one
is provided). This work is specifically termed "directory-to-directory
reciprocal linking".
Before
people started playing games with PageRank and Alexa
rankings, and other tangential matters related to
linking, most linking took place between sites within
relevant realms of interest. Asking for links outside
of your realm was not only rude, but it was almost
always a waste of time. Relevancy was the primary
criteria, and as long as there was some sound reason
for the exchange, and each webmaster approved of
the other's site, it was done. It's a private exchange
between two willing parties, and it should not be
judged by others.
The Linking Challenge
The challenge here is that there is a lot of data
management work involved in managing directory-to-directory
reciprocal link exchanges. So when search engines
started to reward sites that had links, the search
engine optimization (SEO) crowd, which had largely
ignored linking, suddenly needed them in order to
succeed.
The
SEO crowd began to devise all manner of strategies
that were designed to allow them to get the results
they wanted, but with as little linking work as
possible. We've seen theories that only links from
pages with PageRank (PR) 4 and higher were "worthwhile".
People claimed that un-reciprocated links were "hurting"
your rankings through "PR-leakage", a
concept that has been proven to have no merit. There's
even more bizarre stuff out there, but you get the
idea.
Over
time, it is becoming clear that the websites that
have ignored all of these complex theories and still
treat linking as a branding function of the business,
whereby they simply continue to pursue relevant
links with quality sites, are still doing the best
with the search engines. I see this all the time.
Traditional linking with quality relevant sites
works. Sites that link with quality sites relevant
to the same industry get the double benefit of having
their sites listed in as many relevant locations
as possible, thus getting quality traffic directly
from the links, while enjoying considerable search
engine benefits.
The Long Term Commitment and Payoff
Treat this work as a branding function of your business.
One that never ends. Commit to it, with tools, a
budget, and dedicated human resources that will
do it properly. Look at it as a long term necessity
that really does pay dividends.
It
may not be the easiest thing to manage, but many
website owners consider reciprocal linking to be
the single most cost-effective marketing investment
that they have made in their sites. There are other
ways to get links to your site, such as the outright
purchase of links, or the pursuit of content citations
back to your site. But on a cost per link basis,
directory-to-directory reciprocal linking is a very
favorable investment, when done properly.
Google
has risen to the top of the search engine world,
in a large part because their algorithm that takes
linking into account. It is highly unlikely that
they will turn their back on it, and recent indexing
changes at Google have only further supported traditional,
honest linking practices.
On a more fundamental level, linking is the very
foundation of HTML. Which stands for Hypertext Markup
Language. The term Hypertext specifically refers
to text that is linked and "active". That
is, you can click on it in an HTML browser, and
the browser will take you to that location on the
World Wide Web. The attraction of text-based linking
was the founding reason behind HTML and the World
Wide Web. Prior to that, people using the Internet
had to enter their destinations manually using arcane
codes. HTML and browsers made it easy to navigate
the Web.
"Traditional linking with quality
relevant sites works."
It's very basic, really. The World Wide Web is a
new and unique medium. It is a computer network,
based entirely on links between pages. The more
links you have, the more opportunities you have
for people to visit your website. Links are literally
the currency of the World Wide Web.
All
of this comes down to choices. As it stands right
now, those who make no effort to link their sites
in some way will only continue to fall further behind
their competitors. Since directory-to-directory
reciprocal linking is the most cost effective way
to get this done, then it should be very high on
your list of necessary tasks, if you are serious
about promoting a commercial website. It goes with
the territory.
