Go directly to Part 16: The hidden benefits to having
right links. Every site online has an index or default file as its home page file. But outside of that rule you can name other pages whatever you like. So why not cram names with keywords and/or keyphrases relevant to that page and your site? We've just scored again ;-)
Eg exercise-equipment-reviews.htm is our reviews page.
Note hyphen again always try to avoid using spaces when naming your files or pages. You will get a horrible looking 20% appearing, which is something browsers throw in there to represent a space.
If we then name link to this page from our other pages 'exercise equipment reviews' and also make link bold we'll score a whole bunch of points on SE's. If you then use other techniques described on this page to optimize page exercise-equipment-reviews.htm around phrase 'exercise equipment reviews'. You'll be well on your way to getting a top listing in engines. ;-)
Keywords and keyphrases in a link and name of a page file are very important boosters.Anyone would be a fool not to optimize them to hilt. But this is often overlooked and simply not known about.
7: Name your Images properly and utilise their Alt tags. Each image file displayed on a site is linked to with a line of code containing path to image. So along lines of our link strategy above lets utilise that link and fill it with keywords.
Eg We have an image on our home page of a piece of exercise equipment. Lets name that image exercise-equipment.jpg. Most sites store their images in a folder named images, logical, but there's a missed opportunity there. Lets call our image folder exercise-equipment.
So what we have as a link to our image is src="exercise-equipment/ exercise-equipment.jpg" Very nice.
But there's more, all images should have an Alt tag this tag controls text that appears when you role over an image, little yellow box that appears with a description? Hmmm … what should we do with that ;-) You guessed it stick our key words in there.
Is that it for images ? not quite there's one more trick I'll let out of bag here. Its very simple but effective, add a link to your image to a relevant page or if you don't want it to lead anywhere link it back to page its on. Either way you'll score again for keywords in link as mentioned above. ;-)
So you should have something like this - a href="exercise-equipment-review.htm" rel="nofollow" img src=" exercise-equipment/exercise-equipment.jpg " alt="exercise equipment" width="113" height="123" border="0"
Just look at all those juicy keywords. This little technique is little known and is another wasted opportunity.
8: Site map and doorway pages. A site map simply consists of links to all pages on your site. It may be that way you have your site structured you will have some pages that don't link to each other. Having a site map linked to from every page not only helps visitors navigate your site but also acts as a highway for 'spiders' to crawl all of your site quickly and easily. Plus think of all those juicy keyword and keyphrase links on one page. ;-)
Doorway pages consist of techniques mentioned already on this page but taken that little bit further. Essentially pages focus heavily around a keyphrase and utilise techniques mentioned here sometimes to detriment of grammar and readability. A doorway page exists to get a listing in SE's for its keyphrase and when visited it simply has a link to main site.
If your site is pretty small then it may be useful to have some keyphrase targeted doorway pages. If your sites a little larger there's no reason why you can't focus existing pages on a keyphrase properly as described here and have them do same job as a doorway page.
9: Link exchange. Over last 2-3 years or so links pointing to your site have become extremely important.Following Googles lead SE's have placed more emphasis on related and relevant links a site has. The better these links are better your sites ranking. It's important to state that not just any old link will do although this will help a little a relevant link would be much more beneficial.
So back to our example site - Our site sells and reviews exercise equipment that's all. That's a pretty big area by itself anyway. But what if we exchanged links with a site selling exercise clothing, exercise-clothing.com. One of our keywords is in there which is even better. We add value to our site, exercise-clothing.com adds value to their site our ranking is boosted in SE's and SE provides better results. Everyone's a winner.
It's not good enough just to find relevant sites. Ideally you should be finding sites that get good results in SE's already. Linking to one of these sites will give your site a great boost.
But how do you find out how well a site is ranked? Try these two free tools -
Google toolbar - I'm sure Google needs no introduction. Other than to say once you have it installed little horizontal green bar in middle of toolbar displays Page ranking(PR) of any site you visit. Other benefits of toolbar include, search Google from whichever site your on, a popup stopper and an autofill form feature, enter your details once and whenever you need to fill a form in online you can do it with one click.
Alexa toolbar - Alexa is a search engine owned by Amazon. This toolbar goes into even more detail about a site you visit. You can check its ranking, who's linking to it and even go back in time and view site as it was years ago. There's also a search feature for Alexa and Google, and a search feature for Amazon built in, so you can search any of them from any site. Handy for ordering those books, CD's and DVD's.
