Continued from page 1
Buying Links Buying links is also becoming more commonplace. It is a form of purchased advertising that is less obvious than banner adverts or pay per click listings. Often
link will be placed on multiple pages, or all pages within site. If purchasing a link, make sure you are clear about why are you buying it? Is it for search engine ranking purposes only, or to get traffic directly from link?
Make sure link is worth what you are paying in terms of traffic it will send you and not solely to improve your page’s ranking. If link partners page is well ranked in search engines under a specific key phrase but receives few visitors, it won’t be sending many visitors to your web site. If page is well ranked, it may help with your ranking in Google and rest, but that would be icing on cake.
Forums Join forums and discussion groups related to your business and place links to your web site in your signature line. Use your main search terms as link text. But before spending time writing lots of posts with your signature line in each post, make sure that forum is spiderable by checking robots.txt file. Also make sure that links in signature lines are not hidden from spiders (view source code to make sure that signature links are in plain HTML and point directly to site).
Link Exchange Centres Find and join free link exchange centres like LinkPartners.com. There you can find a categorised directory of websites that also want to exchange links. Be careful not to sign up with FFA (Free-For-All) sites because they are mostly email address gatherers and you can expect a sudden increase in email sp@m soon after you sign up. Also, only sign up with centres where you can approach other sites personally, and where they can approach you personally.
Controlling Your Links When providing your link partners with text to use in your inbound link, make sure it contains key phrase you are targeting. Search engines will take into account words that are included in actual link as well at text around it so include a brief paragraph about your business and if possible link your top key phrase to your URL. Make sure that each link points to page you are promoting for that particular search term. This should improve your ranking in their listings.
Pointing all links to your home page, with various target search terms, won't achieve same as pointing targeted links at specific pages within site.
How not to link Under no circumstances join any link farms! Link farms, such as LinksToYou.com, sound simple and effective, but search engines, Google in particular, disapprove of them as blatant attempts to manipulate rankings and they will penalise sites that use them. Once a site has been penalised, it is very difficult to get penalty lifted, so avoid all link farms at all costs.
Search engine software engineers always look for spam tactics, when a software engineer discovers a link farm; all domains in link farm are banned. Result? Link popularity vanishes.
Summary Acquiring links can be time-consuming and tedious. There are a number of ways to get them, some being easier than others. However you get them, inbound links are important for websites that want to move up rankings. Inbound links, with right link text, are essential for achieving top rankings when there is any competition for search terms.
Link development's main advantage is dynamic, cumulative, and difficult to imitate. Many sites maintain search engine visibility and resulting qualified traffic because of successful link development, not just based on number of keywords on a page.
For top rankings, it is essential to take time to get as many quality inbound links as possible. It should be treated as an ongoing task. Getting your first link is like getting your first sale. It is just as hard - and just as satisfying.
Linking strategies are just one of a wide range of subjects covered in our guide “Start at Beginning”. It covers all basics of building and optimising your web site for both your customers and organic search engine rankings. For an excerpt and contents list visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html
Is your web site driving high quality, targeted customers to your business? Our proven Internet Marketing solutions make your web site work harder for you. For a complete range of Internet marketing and advertising resources to improve search engine positions visit Enable UK. Stop losing customers to your competitors and make more money from your web site TODAY. www.enable-uk.co.uk
