Day 25- Link Building
When it comes choosing which sites will rank high in the organic search results, most search engines like Google put a heavy weighting on reputation. Reputation is an effective shortcut for evaluating the quality of information presented to us. One way in which your sites reputation will be judged is by the number and quality of incoming links.
Not only are they good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but links also serve another useful purpose; they drive visitors to your website.
- Why search engines value links. Every link to your page is a “vote” for its quality. Organic search engines tally the votes when they decide which pages possess the highest quality for their search results.
In a sense you could say that it’s not what your page/ site knows, but who knows it- links to your page cause it to be treated with respect regardless of its actual content.
How Web Sites Link
Links between web pages use an HTML tag. Heres what they look like;
<a href=”http://www.homebusinessbuilders.com”>Home Business Builders</a>
On a page, the above would look like this; Home Business Builders.
Notice how the first part of the code , the “href” parameter identifies the URL of the page to link to, while the second part of the code identifies what’s known as the “anchor text.” The anchor text is the part that we see on the page, and is highlighted in blue, while the “href” part identifies the destination of where your visitors will go once they click.
How Link Popularity Works
Many search experts believe that as few as 25 high-quality links to your site can significantly increase your search rankings, but attracting these high quality links can be difficult.
As a demonstration of link popularity, consider this; if you had done a Google search for the term “miserable failure” before 2008, the number one spot would land you on ex- president George Bush’s Official Biography page. Why? Because enough people got together and linked to that site with the term “miserable failure” in their anchor text. Google once placed such weight on the anchor text that this was enough to get you ranked… they’ve since revised their search engines algorithms to stop this, but anchor text is very important. So if you’d like to get ranked for the search term “LifePath” then part of your strategy can be to use “LifePath” in your anchor text.
For example, I would have code that looks like this;
<a href= “http://www.homebusinessbuilders.com.au”>LifePath Unlimited</a>
and it would display like this;
A page’s link popularity is evaluated in 4 different ways;
- Link quality; In general, pages that receive more links to them will rank higher than pages that receive few links, although not all links are created equal.
- Link quality; Everyone has an opinion, but some are worth more than others. Opinions expressed by those people creating links are no different. A link to a page is an endorsement, but those endorsements have more value when they are coming from well- respected and authoritative sources than from others. Search engines will determine authority by examining the link popularity of the site linked from. So if you can get a high-authority site (one that itself has many other high- authority sites linking to it) to link to you, some of it’s authority will be transferred to you.
- Anchor text; The text that the visitor clicks to follow the link is very important, since it provides the context of the recommendation. Consider if you have two links that point to your page; the first has “Home Business” for the anchor text, while the second has “Home Business in Austrlia.” Both clearly indicate that searches for “Home Business” might want to look at these pages, but only the second one conveys that the Home Business is in Austrlia, which may be important to the searcher.
- Link Relevancy; Your sites incoming links should be from contextually relevant sites. When I say “contextually relevant,” I mean that the pages sending those links should be about your sites topic. Getting a link from a site that is related to business or working from home is usually better than getting a link from a site that is, say, about real estate.
It’s rather amazing that the search engines are able to look at all of these factors in the split second between doing a search and being presented with the results.
The best links you’ll ever get are the ones that drive qualified traffic to your site. By qualified, I mean that the people are already looking for what you offer; a home business opportunity. These people are most likely to be looking on sites that provide information about home business’s, so they are the sites you want linking to your site.
How Not To Get Links
- Blog spamming; A blog (short for Web log) is an online personal journal- kind of like a periodic column on the internet. Sometimes reading a blog is like reading someones diary, other times it’s like a magazine column that tightly focus’s on a subject of interest. You can see an example of my blog that relates to Home Business Builders and LifePath here. Readers can subscribe to blogs and read the latest posts, and can also leave comments. Blog spamming occurs when people leave their webiste URL on a blog as a comment, when it has nothing to do with the blog, and is purely there for self- promotion. If you want to leave your URL on someones blog, make sure that your comment adds value to the post, and that there is a good reason to leave your URL (like offering a free report that expands on the topic in the blog).
- Link Farms; Some tricky search marketers will set up dozens or hundreds of sites that can be crawled by search engines, just so they put in thousands of their own links to sites that they want to boost in the organic results. Stay clear of these, since the search engines are on to them and any link you get from them probably won’t count for much.
- Hidden Links; You can hide links by making them so they can only be seen by the search engines, but not human visitors. For example, if you have a website that has a red background, then you could put in links where the anchor text is also red. People won’t be able to see these, but the search engines will. Maybe this worked in the past, but search engines have long since figured out this technique, so once again the link won’t add a lot of value (it could even get your site penalised).
Think About Visitors First
Remember, links drive visitors to your website- visitors who come to your site because they followed the links. Some of these visitors will turn into leads, so getting links from relevant sites with high traffic can be very valuable. Remember, search engines are forever changing their rules so their results to better reflect the quality that human visitors desire. So if you focus on getting links so they will draw the most qualified visitors, rather than getting links to climb the search engines, you will always be in sync with what the search engines want. It will work out much better in the long term if you focus on people, not on manipulating the search engines.
Step-by-Step Link Building for Your Site
Building up links is a slow process. If you can commit yourself to it, and work at it consistently, then you’ll eventually succeed.
- Make your site a link magnet. The best way to get links is to create a website that is so excellent, that it draws links to it without them even being requested. In this training centre, I’ve linked to Gary Halberts site a number of times, despite the fact that I was never asked to. The reason I do it is because that site offers so much useful information to our users, that I want everyone to read it.
- Perform a link audit. As with any online marketing you do, you need to be able to measure your success. You need to know where you stand before you can track your improvement.
- Identify sources of links. Before you request any site to link to you, you’ve got to explore your options and determine why each site will give you the link you want.
- Negotiate your links. How should you request links? What can you offer in return? Are there any alternatives to just promising a reciprocal link in return? You need to learn how to bargain for the links you need.
Make Your Site Like a Link Magnet
What some may call linkability, others might call link- worthy. Regardless of the name, you need to make your site a link magnet.
Your site, or individual site page, must offer a reason to link to it.
Some reasons might be;
- Valuable information. Mnay good link landing pages provide important information. The information could be an article, a series of videos (eg. made with camtasia and posted on YouTube), a blog, a newsletter, an ebook, etc. What sites have visitors who need your information? What makes your information a “must- have” for them?
- An authoritative source of information. Your landing page doesn’t need to have original information- instead, it can the the right place to find trust worthy pages on the internet about a subject. You could even set up a page that contains lots of useful YouTube videos on a particular topic, like advertising your Home Business. This is perfectly legitimate too….anyone who puts their video on YouTube wants it to be made public, and so you’re allowed to use their videos on your site.
- Provde content to other sites. You can write articles for other websites, allowing them to place your article on their site, as long as they leave your name and link at the bottom of it. You can also do this in the offline world, by writing useful articles for magazines like “Small Business & Home- Based Income,” on topics that you know about.
Perform a Link Audit
To measure you incoming links so far, you can perform a link audit. To check your number of incoming links (or back links), you can download the Google Toolbar (just google it, it’s free), and then navigate to your page, and click on the on the blue circle with the ‘i’ in it on your Google Toolbar. Google will then count and display the highest- quality pages in its index that are linked to your page.
Yahoo! Several operations you can use as well. Just go to Yahoo, then type in the following;
For links to a specific page on your site, type; link:http://www.yoursite.com/page.html
For external links to a specific page, type; link:http://yoursite.com/page.html
For links to an entire site, type; linkdomain:www.yoursite.com
Another useful thing to do is to find links to your site (or to others) that contain specific anchor text.
Just go to Google and type in the following; inanchor:lifepath unlimited:yoursite.com , and you’ll be able to see all of the links to your site with the anchor text “LifePath Unlimited.”
At this early stage, you might not have that many links. But if you work at it consistently you’ll soon build them up. A useful strategy is to look at the top ranking sites and see who they are getting links from. So if you go to Google and do a search for “LifePath,” you can then examine closely who the top three ranking sites are getting their links from (Many of them are just writing a lot of articles).
Here are some other Link Audit tools you might want to take a look at;
How Important Is a Site’s PageRank?
PageRank is Googles way of evaluating a sites quality, and is named after one of the co-founders of Google, Larry Page. The score ranges from 0 to 10, with 10 indicating the highest quality.
If you have a Google Toolbar installed (they’re free) you can roll your mouse over the green PageRank bar to see what it’s score is.
PageRank is not calculated on a linear scale, but on an exponential scale. So what that means is that PageRank 5 is not just one better than PageRank 4- it could be six or seven times better. So the difference between a PageRank 8 page and a PageRank 5 page could be much better than you think.
Getting links from pages with a high PageRank is good, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s more important to get links from sites that will drive heavy, highly-qualified traffic to your site, regardless of their page rank.
Using Press Releases to Get Links
Press Releases can be a surefire way to grab links to your website. Press Releases are being increasingly read on the web, so visitors can click through and come to your website. If you distribute your press releases through PRWeb, PR Newswire, they can feed the search engines and relevant blogs with your release as soon as it is issued, providing many ways for people to reach your site. These press releases will contain highly relevant links from important sites that help the search rankings of the pages on your site that they are linking to.
Solicited Links
Before you ever consider paying someone for links, you need to ask yourself the following questions;
- Does the site contain credible, well-written information?
- Are the visitors to the site the kinds of visitors you want at your site? If not, why do you want them to visit your website? Remember, the goal here is to get qualified leads, not just high rankings or lots of unqualified traffic.
- Does the site’s content relate to yours in a strong way? Theres no point in getting links from a local pet store to your home business site. Your visitors wouldn’t place much stock in the owners recommendation, since the two are entirely unrelated…. so why should a search engine?
The most important links will come from Web Directories. The Yahoo! Directory and Open Directory are two of the most important directories you should pursue (The Open Directory has people who manually review each site submitted, so it can take some time).
Blogs
Since most blogs have blocked the spamming techniques that plagued them not so long ago, blog links are once again quite valuable (I don’t mean in the comments section, but rather in the actual copy of the blog itself). If you can interest well- respected and popular bloggers to write about you, and to link to you, this can be quite valuable. To find good blogs, check out the blog search engine Technorati.
Paid Links
Paid links can be useful if you want to raise your search rankings in a hurry, and you just cannot wait for all of those solicited links to be agreed to.
Because search engines put such a big premium on links, they’ve soared in value. Some people believe it’s unethical to pay for links, and the search engines will certainly devalue links when they can identify them.
Paid links are valuable because they drive qualified traffic to your site- whether you’re paying search engines for paid placements, or paying a popular Web site to provide a link to yours.
Link brokers and link auctions are two sources of paid links. Text Link Ads (www.text-link-ads.com) offers links for sale at fixed prices and even provides a service suggestion for new link opportunities on your specified topic. Another link vendor, LinkAdage (www.linkadage.com), sells links at auction, so that the highest bidder walks away with each link available. Thousands of links are available for sale, and the use of a middleman gives you some protection against fraudulent operators that try to cash your check but fail to provide the actual link.
Deciding how much to pay for a link is not easy. As we’ve advised throughout this chapter, value the link for the qualified traffic that it drives to your site, treating it’s effect on your link popularity as a welcome bonus. Some search marketers end up paying thousands of dollars each month for a relevant text link from a popular page (maybe with a PageRank as high as 9). At other times, you can buy a less-popular link that nonetheless feeds qualified visitors to your site for as little as $10 am month.
Beware of any unsolicited paid link opportunities… Cold calls and spam e-mails are frequently coming from someone out to separate you from your cash, without delivering anything of value.
If you come across a site that you would like a link from, initiate the request by sending the owner an email. Here are some tips for crafting an e-mail that will get you the link you desire:
- Address it to a person. If you are stuck sending your request to an impersonal address, such as webmaster@pleaselinktome.com, your odds of getting the link drop sharply. Identifying a personal e-mail address along with the person’s name will improve your chances enormously.
- Use a compelling subject line. Your first job is to get the email opened, so a subject line of ‘link request’ is not going to get it done. Make sure your subject line also includes the name of the target company so that it does not look like another spam offer.
- Prove you visited the recipient’s site In the first paragraph, compliment something about the site to distinguish your request from all the other generic e-mails received every day. Show that you took the time to send a personal request so that you look like someone to pay attention to.
- Sell. Explain why the link is good for visitors to your partner’s site. this is the most critical part of the e-mail. You need a really simple, but compelling reason for an endorsement to your site. Your e-mail will only be read once, probably hurried, so make sure the sale in these few sentences. If you are going to do a two-way link request (where you both link to one another), make sure that you have already placed your link to your partner’s site and that you identify to them what page on your site has got that link.
- Identify the page to be linked from. Obviously, choosing pages with high page ranks and few links is nice, but you need to get the link from the page on your partners site that makes the most sense for your visitors, not just the search engines. Don’t be afraid to include the sentence with the anchor text, or a description of where the link is headed on your site, if that fits with the page you have identified. You can even send the actual HTML for the linking site to be use. Just be careful to not use the same anchor text and description on every request. You want some variation, so that the links appear natural to search engines and so each searcher will find a link pointing to your site no matter what keyword variation is used.
- Ask for a response. As with any sales pitch, you need to close with a call to action. If you can inject some urgency into the request, that’s even better: “I’ll keep this link on my site for the next two weeks while you consider my request.”
Summary
Links are important to organic search marketing, and they rise in importance as competition for your keywords gets stronger. The most searched-for keywords have the most pages vying to be shown at the top of the results, so your page’s link popularity is often the key component in its search ranking.
But links are valuable far beyond search marketing. High- quality links to your site from all the “right” places can drive many qualified visitors to your site through those links. In fact, I believe that attracting links to your site should be based on the qualified traffic those links will bring not based on any calculated effect you’re expecting in your search rankings. If you attract those right links that bring the right visitors, the search engines will follow.