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One of the most important aspects of Search Engine Marketing and to improve your Rankings is of building high quality incoming Links.
A successful linking strategy builds valuable inbound links to your site over time and can't achieve hundreds of quality inbound links over night since links for the sake of links have no value. You must have a number of good quality content pages on your site and you should publish outbound links that your site users will find valuable. Once you have built a number of great quality content pages, the best way to build your site's link popularity is to get Incoming links without exchanging outgoing links is by getting listed in and using: These techniques are by far your best options for a simple inbound link program, it will take some time and maybe a bit of money too but it is definitely worth your efforts!
A winning linking strategy is not a trick and can't be achieved over night since links for the sake of links have no value. The basic principle is create good content, link to great content and great content will link to you. Treat linking as one important aspect of your online marketing. Decide how much time and effort you are prepared to invest in relation to your other marketing activities and be disciplined about your approach. Monitor your results and adapt your strategy as necessary. At the very least, you should put the basics in place by making your site link friendly and publishing content that will be attractive to your existing customers as well as those you hope to attract through linking. Once you have the basics in place, the natural momentum of the web will take over and your link popularity will grow organically.
Benefits of a quality Link Building Strategy Following a link is one of the most popular ways for people to find new sites whereas 80% of your site traffic will come through search engines. If a site or a writer that you respect gives a link to further resources, then because of that respect you’re likely to follow it. Therefore, the more inbound links you have to your site, the greater the opportunities for people to find your valuable content. Search engines give sites with good inbound and outbound links a higher ranking. The logic goes that if you provide outbound links to other material you are providing a valuable service: and, if other sites link to you then you must have content of value. Inbound links help to build trust. If people see that a popular or respected site links to you, then their level of trust in what you say and what you offer is likely to be higher. Perhaps most importantly, you become part of a community. In every field of activity on the web there will be a number of key sources. Linking to them and providing valuable content that they can link to will make you a part of a powerful virtual network. When a trusted site links to yours, people follow the recommendation. A successful linking strategy will bring a continuous stream of qualified prospects to your site. It will raise your profile within your industry - and boost your search engine rankings. Linking is the last remaining area of online marketing capable of building you a serious competitive advantage without costing a fortune. There are hundreds of portals, directories, ezines, newsletters and blogs in your market sector that could link to your site. These links have the potential to drive new business. Not just once, but week after week, month after month.
One of the most important aspects of search engine optimization and to improve your rankings is of building high quality incoming links. The more quality inbound links your site gets, the more popular it is - which is the criteria for search engines when they rank your site. A key point to remember is that search engines rank sites with valuable link structure well and they do not approve link structures that are built artificially.
Valuable vs. harmful/artificial Link Structure Valuable links vary in anchor text while artificial links tend to be identical. Valuable links increase gradually as referral sites add links to your web site one by one over time; artificial links can sprout in great numbers all of a sudden. Sites designed around quality links don't usually swap links, so their outgoing links tend to point to pages that are known by the engine to be in good standing. Often these pages have been indexed for many years and may even be white listed - a term that identifies trusted sites not to be penalized. Sites designed around artificial links will often participate in link swapping and have outgoing links that point to pages that resemble link farms, web rings, or isolated nodes (i.e. page groups linking to each other but lacking inbound links from outside trusted sites). Valuable links tend to be non-reciprocal. Choose Your Links Wisely Yahoo!/Inktomi and the new MSN Search Beta do not discount links to web sites from blogs and guest books. So, those web sites that have automated programs to get links from guestbooks and blog web sites are currently winning the ranking wars at Yahoo!, MSN, and the MSN Search Beta. At most search engines, you have the ability to check the links that a web site has going to it. Google doesn't show all the backlinks to a web site, and we believe they do that on purpose because their search engine algorithm relies so heavily on links. So, to get the most accurate count of the real backlinks that a web site has you must use another search engine. Yahoo! shows a fairly accurate count of backlinks. However, due to the heavy spidering activity of MSNbot, the new MSN Search provides the most accurate view of a website's backlinks.
Get Your Keywords Into Your Anchor Text It's very important that you get your keywords into the text of the link (anchor text) that other sites are using to point visitors your way. True, this may be difficult with directories unless the name of your company includes your keywords. Regardless, the boost in keyword relevancy is significant enough that it's worthwhile to contact everyone who is linking to you with a specific request regarding the text being used in your link. If you happen to be selling model airplanes, then anchor text such as 'airplane models' or 'model airplanes' will be infinitely more valuable to your relevance efforts than anchor text simply saying 'click here'.
Internal Linking Structure
Several major search engines use linking to deciding the importance of your site under search terms. Google does this by analyzing the page that the link is on and the page it arrives at. If the content is similar it will count the link as a good link and score it accordingly. The more On-topic links to your site you have the better your site will perform especially if the site that is linking to you has a Google page rank of at least 3. The more links to your site the higher your page rank will become and the higher your page rank becomes the high the position your site will appear in the listings under the search terms your site is optimized for. The linking sites also tell the search engine what your site is important for i.e. what search terms you should appear high under.
The Best Place To Start Getting Links rather than swapping links (which should always be your very last strategy), consider some of your alternative options for acquiring incoming links. Probably the best place to start is by submitting your site to web directories. Here's a list of links to the most important general-topic free web directories. You should also review the DMOZ Submit FAQ at: http://dmoz.org/help/submit.html Starting out, it's time and cost effective to focus on getting into the major directories listed above. Each one that links to you substantiates your site in the eyes of the engines. You get an incoming link from a trusted site and another new source of targeted traffic. We also recommend reading the Zeal Style Guidelines, which provides detailed information about submitting your site to directories. However, you need to know that after you get into a few of the major directories the relevancy boost from being listed in general directories drops off pretty fast. At this point you should start tapping into the power of getting on-topic links from topic-specific directories.
Many online business owners write articles about topics related to their sites. Then they offer to let other sites use them as content in exchange for a link back to the author's site. You're probably an expert in the business you're in and therefore an authority on certain subjects that may lend themselves to interesting reading that becomes worthwhile information for a basket of ancillary products and services.
Swap" links with a partner company that you closely do business with - or whose services compliment your own. Look for business partnerships with other web sites that are useful to your own customers and whose customers are useful to you. Look for compatible (but not competing) businesses, then form a partnership where you link to each other actively through mutual promotion. Not only can this bring in new traffic and boost your PageRank, but you may also develop important business relationships this way.
Press releases are an excellent way to gain relevant links to your company's site. Again, be creative - chances are that there's a number of reasons (product launches, staff additions, promotions, partnerships, new services, etc.) you can find to release news about your company to the press. Press releases are quickly picked up by the engines and the links contained within them are typically trusted. They also tend to remain on the web for a good long time.
Another interesting way to promote your own site is to submit testimonials, along with a link to your site, about products you are really enthusiastic about. If the testimonial is well-written, the company will often post it on their site. One of the more under-utilized "secrets" for gaining incoming links is to participate in forums that allow a text link to your site within your forum signature. Look for subjects in which you are knowledgeable and begin posting - asking and answering questions. Be sure to make legitimate contributions and you'll find that your participation will be a welcomed addition in spite of the plug for your site. One of the most potentially productive tips - Find out who's linking to your competitors and convince them to link to you instead. Go to Yahoo and enter: linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com-site:www.your-competitor.com in the Yahoo search box and you'll learn who you should contact.
If the link is an especially good one (authoritative site in good standing with great incoming links, few outbound links, and high PageRank, then pay them if you have to. Offer them a better deal than the one they have (if any). Do whatever it takes to get those quality links! Write it off under the cost of advertising.
By using your imagination and dovetailing the nuances of your own business into the mix, you'll no doubt discover a plethora of opportunities for gaining legitimate incoming links.
When all else fails, you may begin considering reciprocal links. We don't like this strategy all that much because search engines are continuously getting more sophisticated about detecting artificial linking patterns. Unfortunately, one of the most artificial linking patterns is reciprocal links, since valuable link patterns are not typically reciprocal. If Yahoo lists a site in their directory, that site doesn't routinely link back to Yahoo. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but, regardless, the engines are looking for pages that rank well due to popularity based on content - and they want to avoid sites where it appears the webmaster has spent a lot of time swapping links. So, look at things from the search engine's point of view. If CNN runs an article about how great your company is and your company's site links back to the CNN article, does that look normal from the SEPOV? ...sure it does. Besides, CNN is an authoritative site that is white listed. They can do no wrong in the eyes of the engine and the link exchange looks like a valuable link structure from the SEPOV. And, your site's page can expect a substantial boost in ranking. On the other hand, if your site (with it's PR=4 or 5) is linked by Joe Blow's homepage with a PR=1, 2, or 3 and you link back to Joe's page, you shouldn't expect much, if any, boost in your rankings. In fact, it's entirely possible the two links are discounting each other based on an assumed link exchange arrangement that looks contrived because neither page is "authoritative" from the SEPOV. Now, if you had, say 50 similar link arrangements, and the links were on-topic, and none of the pages involved had tripped the spam filters, then your page should get a reasonable boost in rankings. Still, you'd fair better simply by getting a single killer link from an authoritative site like CNN, Yahoo Directory, DMOZ, ZDNet, and so forth. The point is, focus your efforts on collecting all the links you can from authoritative sites. If you want to do your search manually, here are a number of searches that will help you find sites to get links from. Replace "your keywords" with words that your site is targeting and concentrate on the most important ones.
Be Careful Who You Link Back To!
Remember, you probably won't be hurt by who links to you. However, you can definitely be hurt by who you link to. Train Your Eye On The Primary Goal - Profits!
Finally - Don't try to trick the Search Engines! With the ever growing reliance on links to bring visitors to your site and to increase its link popularity, it is little wonder that a whole industry was developed to supply that demand. Some of the more notorious solutions are Link Farms and the Free For All (FFA) type of directory. A FFA site accepts links from anyone, anytime and as many of them as you wish. The downside is that the link has only a limited life span and newer entries push down previous entries, until they are dropped altogether. Moreover, you are likely to be asked for an email address, which can then be used to spam you to death! But that's just the start to your problem: Search Engines (like Google) may punish you for submitting your link to a FFA site! Why? Quite simply because that 'link' has no other purpose but to increase your link popularity. In other words - it does not represent a vote of confidence in your site, but an attempt to deceive the Search Engines and 'dupe' them, hoping that they will not notice. Well, they do - and are getting better at it all the time!
Summary - Strategies for building and structuring your Inbound Links
These are the most important strategies for building and structuring your inbound links. Of course, building such a valuable incoming link structure takes time. That is why search engines tend to highly rank the sites that conform to this pattern. Over time, experience has taught us that overnight success strategies are fickle while the solid content and slow but steady link building approach remains the cornerstone for succeeding long term. The basic principle of a winning links strategy remains to be to create great content, link to other good content pages and valuable content sites will link to you. Make your site link friendly and publish content that will be attractive to your existing customers as well as those you hope to attract through linking. Once you have the basics in place, the natural momentum of the web will take over and your link popularity will grow organically.
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