How can I best use links?

1) Directory listing Get your site listed in Open Directory Project (Dmoz) which is free – Google uses this site to assist its indexing, it is used by many 100’s of other search engines. Get a listing in Yahoo directory £199 ($299) as this leading directory. There are many regional and lesser-known directories that are also worth considering.

2) Request links Start by visiting open directory, and search using your keywords – you will find sites listed here are normally already well ranked. Select sites you feel will be open to a link request. Put a link on your site first then ask for a reciprocal link.

Try also using Alexa (www.alexa.com) – to identify highly ranked sites then use their “show links to” feature to identify their backlinks (sites linking in) then approach these too.

3) Promote inter-site linkability Internal links as well as external links contribute towards Page Rank – a site with a good link structure is also more likely to appeal to potential link candidates than a site with a poor structure.

4) Publish articles Consider paying professional authors to write articles on your behalf – then submit them for publishing on condition that a link to your site is attached. This can be a very successful strategy but time and effort is needed for it to pay off.

Conclusion

A good link strategy can greatly benefit a sites ranking on Google – be very careful that your links are carefully chosen as Google is clamping down on abuses of links.

To optimise each page, select your key words, use them regularly in your page text, Meta tags and anchored text links in, particularly from related themed pages.

If you promote your site in this way it is quite possible that internal pages will rank higher and bring as much if not more traffic as your landing or index page.

Clare Lawrence is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd – A leading UK provider of Domain name registration and Web Hosting services. Please feel free to re-publish this article provided this reference box remains together with a hyperlink to http://www.discountdomainsuk.com Clare can also be contacted on Clare@discountdomainsuk.com.