Link
Building for Top Search Engine Placement (Part 2)
(Continued
from Part 1, published in Newsletter No. 83 last month)
Finding
The Links
Since
you're looking for links to boost your search engine placement,
the best place to start is obvious ... the search engines.
A few searches should produce 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
(if you downloaded the Google Toolbar using the link provided
last month, then you will be able to see at a glance the
PageRank of any website you visit). 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 guidelines provided in
Part 1 of this article last month, 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 a reciprocal link.
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 dated 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.
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 be-all and end-all of attaining top search
engine placement. Firstly you need to make sure your website
is updated regularly and that it provides your visitors
with valuable content for the search terms they are entering.
Link building is the icing. Without the cake it amounts
to nothing.
(To
check out last month's newsletter online - CLICK
HERE)
Website
statistics cost just $5.00 + GST per month
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your visitors come from, what pages are most popular, what
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Leanne
Taylor
:: www.wwwdesign.co.nz
::
Award Winning Website Design, Hosting & Maintenance
Phone/Fax (09) 817 9656 ~ Mobile (0274) 701990
