Julia: Welcome Bob. Thank you for taking
time to answer my questions about link building. I'm going to jump right in ask you why Web sites need links?Bob: There are a number of reasons to have links pointing to your site. But let’s start with
reason they were created in
first place. The original purpose of
Internet was to enable
sharing of information. For example, if a scholarly paper existed on a server at
University of California, and a professor at Oxford wanted to read it,
Internet made that instantly possible. Now, if
Oxford professor had a paper that referenced information from
UC paper, they could link directly to that other document rather than just quoting from it. So a hyperlink was intended as a way of connecting data, ideas, and references together. It’s like saying, “if you’d like further information on this topic, here’s a place to find it.”
When
Google search engine was created, its developers took this into account. And drew
conclusion that a link was an indication that
page being linked to was relevant to some particular subject-matter.
So that’s a rather long introduction to a short answer to your question. Web sites need links because they send traffic that’s already targeted to their subject matter to other sites, and because they help
search engines determine both their theme and what
web as a community deems their importance to be. Basically (although not absolutely),
more links that point to a page,
more relevant that page is determined to be. In addition, links are now considered
most reliable way (apart from paying) to get a site into
search engines in
first place.
While both Google and Yahoo allow you to submit a site to their index, it’s clear that
best way to get
search engines to pay attention to your site is to get a page that their spiders already know about to link to yours. The spiders then follow that link to your site, and add it to their index.
Julia: Thanks, Bob. But there are different types of links aren't there? Can you explain differences?
Bob: As we discussed in
previous question, there are text links from other sites. Some of these are reciprocal (that is, they link to you and you link back to them) and others are one-way (the owner of
other site decides, for whatever reason, to link to your site and doesn’t expect you to link back).There are also image links: banners, buttons, etc. These have
advantage of standing out visually from
rest of
page, but many people have become immune to
standard banner ad and just ignore them, because it’s assumed they’re just advertisements, and as such, not necessarily relevant to
page on which they appear.
Then there are directory listings, where a link to your site appears on a page containing links to numerous other sites in what
directory editor has determined to be your particular niche.
An important thing to consider regarding getting a link is
code behind it. If your primary concern is to send traffic to your site, this isn’t important. In that case, what you need to think about is whether
link is going to send
right people to you. But if you want
link to be recognized by
search engines and to contribute to your ranking in searches, you need
link to be in simple HTML, without JavaScript or other code that will hide
link from search engine spiders.
There are also links that won’t help you at all, or will put you in danger of losing your position on
search engines. Guestbook spam,
practice of going to a site’s guest book area and posting a message like “Nice site. Come visit mine, at…” will do you no good. The search engines know that such links carry no value, and just ignore them. The same is true for free-for-all links pages, on which you can immediately add a link to any site, without any editorial oversight.
Link farms are a far more dangerous subject. These are networks of sites that are heavily cross-linked and offer to link to you as long as you link back into
network, or host a page on your site that serves as a directory of sites that
link farm has linked to. The idea here is to abuse
power search engines give to links by exponentially increasing
number of links to your site, without regard for theme or value. You link into
farm, and you have hundreds, perhaps thousands of links pointing back to you. But
links are only there to increase link popularity. The sites on which
links reside are not intended to actually be viewed by people; they’re just intended to give search engine spiders
mistaken impression that your site is extraordinarily popular.
Julia: So, what's
best way to get legitimate and relevant sites to link to yours?
Bob: Before you can get a site to link to yours, you first have to find it. You need to do research on
subject-matter of your site by searching on
keywords you hope people will use to find it. The results of those searches will give you a list of sites that are already performing well for those keywords. You should then study those sites, so that you can write to
webmaster and request a link in such a way that demonstrates that you understand
purpose of their site. And give reasons as to why you think their audience will find your site of interest.
You can buy links from sites as well, sometimes on a single page, and sometimes all across
site. These are just like any other form of advertising. So before you part with your money you need to determine if they’re worth
purchase price by deciding if they’ll send you enough of
right traffic. That’s why sites that offer
opportunity to buy links will make claims about how much traffic they get and how their audience is made up of “decision makers.”
Finally, there are directories, which normally require you to drill down to find
most relevant category for your listing. You can then (depending on
directory) either contact them with your information, or fill out a form on
directory itself and request a listing.