Increase Your Website Value Through Linking
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference
between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a
traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good
and bad, to influence the search engines. Some search
engines react to certain strategies better than others.
Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to.
To document all of these things would require a significant
number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of
this article.
However, there are a number of things that can be
documented that will work for most if not all search
engines. And let's face it; there are really only 3 that
make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful
SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and
MSN. These three search engines in any given month are
responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.
So, what is this article about? It's about what you can do
as a website owner that will influence the search engines
using commonly accepted practices of linking to other
websites (outbound) and getting website links (inbound)
back to you.
There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner
usually will employ to increase their website value in the
eyes of the search engine.
They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site
linking and directory linking. A website owner should not
think that using just a single strategy is the right answer
- sure it will help your SEO but it won't be the Best
answer. The Best answer is to
employ all 4 techniques and to do it naturally.
Each of the four linking strategies has specific
descriptions that can be summed up as:
1. Reciprocal Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B
links back to Site A
2. One-Way Linking = Site B links to Site A
3. Multi-Site Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B
links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D
links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites
involved.
4. Directory Linking = Site Directory A links to Site A
That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to
perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren't
willing to spend the time or don't have the time to spend
on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the
highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after
Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service.
Without free traffic from the search engines, other
traffic generation strategies that usually require payment
must be engaged.
Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets
even harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn't
trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your
website. No one except the search engine engineers know all
of the exact penalties but we have some good theories for
some of them.
The first is the rate at which links are created. There is
a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast.
It's possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is
related to the age of the website according to the engine.
For example, a young low-traffic website should not
normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older
website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000
links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies
make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are
thinking about buying links.
The second is that having a link to every site that links
to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other
words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will
likely move up the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page's)
but you won't reach your sites full potential. Having a
mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the
engines.
The third is having all inbound links to your site on
"linking" pages will make those links less valuable than
having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a
percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive
this context percentage, the better your website will rank.
These types of links are often some of the most difficult
links to generate an exchange for because it requires more
time and effort for both website owners.
The fourth is to have links inbound from all different
ranking sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank
6 and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message
that you purchased your links and that is not natural to
the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links for
driving traffic is just fine and it is.
However, you should not expect the search engines to give
those inbound links very much weight when calculating your
SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for you to
have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a
decreasing number of inbound links as you move up the page
rank scale (0 - 10).
The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied.
It isn't natural to have every website that links to you to
have the same text on the link description.
The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be
the sites name, but after that it should be a wide variety
of description. Your link text description is a key factor
for how your site/page will rank, so make sure that you
keep that in mind as you specify your preferred link text
description on your website.
Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your
inbound links to appear within the text of a page that
appears natural for the reader of that site. And for those
links to not all point back to the home page of your
website. It's most natural for a good high quality link to
appear in the text of a page and have it point internally
within your site.
So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep
all of these things in mind and don't be impatient.
Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website
could end up in the "sandbox".
It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google
supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put
in until they have aged to a point that Google no longer
feels that they are being manipulated. Many of the search
engines use similar protection schemes to eliminate spam
sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP's from
being cluttered.
Article by:
Shelby Carr
http://www.theprofitshack.com
