internetmarketingsolution

Search Engine Linking Strategies

How to improve Your Search Engine Ranking with Incoming Links

Why are inbound links important for search engines?

Inbound links to your website can...

• bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link
• increase the number of visitors to your website
• dramatically improve your search engine rankings!

When another website places a link to your site from a page on their website, the major search engines regard that as a 'vote-of-confidence'. It can also give you a major boost in search engine rankings once you have even a small number of high quality and relevant sites linking to your site.

How to get inbound links to your site

The best way to gain inbound links is to create really useful content, or valuable reference pages relating to your chosen profession or business. Once you have content that others find to be of great value, other website owners will provide links to your site without you needing to take any action whatsoever.

My inbound linking story

Many, many years ago (when I had more hair!) I created a 'dummies-guide-to-ecommerce' web page demonstrating how a secure credit card transaction took place over the Internet. This was written at the most basic level, complete with some rather amateurish diagrams (a graphic artist I'm definitely not) but provided an extremely simple explanation at a time when Internet commerce was a 'great mystery' to most people. Within a couple of months I discovered that I had over 600 other websites linking to my 'mini-guide-to-online-commerce'. Even though that particular website has now become a piece of our company's history, and hasn't had any work done in it for years, a search on www.google.com for ecommerce hosting Australia still brings up our ancient website at No.6 out of more than 8 million results... THAT is the power of inbound links from sites with related content to your own site.

What is an 'Inbound Link'?

An inbound link is just a hyperlink on a page of another person's website. A really simple one is just the link to the domain/page itself, eg: www.ozewebhost.com. However a much higher quality link is created when the link contains some relevant keywords to your site's product or service, eg. "Fresh organic fruit & vegetables here". The inbound link becomes even more valuable if it has related text adjacent to the link. The following linking examples will give you an idea of exactly what to request from any website wishing to place a link to your site.

Inbound linking examples (I have used one of our sites in the following examples)

1. Highest quality inbound link you can request (search engines really score this one highly)
   Secure ecommerce web hosting and design solutions from Australia
   Ecommerce hosting & design solutions from Australia's premier small business Internet consultants. Ozewebhost has had over 10 years experience in providing online ecommerce solutions to small business in Australia.
   ie: Highest quality link = hyperlink as descriptive text, plus some extra text giving more information.
   
2. The 2nd choice link (still good, but No.1 is much, MUCH better for you)
   Secure ecommerce web hosting and design solutions from Australia
   ie: 2nd choice link = hyperlink as descriptive text.
   
3. Simple inbound link (slightly better than nothing, if this is the best you can get)
   wwww.ozewebhost.com.au
   ie: Just a very simple link to the domain home page only.

The benefits of outbound linking to other relevant sites

Another way of making your site more 'authorative' in the eyes of the search engines, plus increase its value to human visitors, is to provide occasional links to other related web pages that are relevant to whatever you are discussing on that particular page.

eg. For further information on this issue, make sure you check out our section containing *more information on linking strategies (*make sure you make any external links open in a new browser window, otherwise the visitors may not return to your site).
Find out how to open an external link in a new browser window.

With outbound links, it is best to avoid having 'zillions' on a page, and 1 - 10 appear to be nice number in the eyes of the major search engines.

Should I use link generating software?

There are numerous software packages on the market that claim to locate suitable linking partners, generate inbound links automatically with certain websites and a host of other things. Generally, they are something to avoid and can frequently submit your site to automated link farms, which most search engines consider to be 'bad neighbourhoods'. Links to your site from dubious websites rarely count for anything at best, and at worst... can result in your site being downgraded by the search engines.

Sorry folks, but the only way to succeed in linking strategies is (if you choose not to spend the time creating unique, useful content that will encourage inbound links)... sheer hard work, blood sweat and tears via manual labour!

How to locate suitable linking partners

One great way of finding other related websites who may be open to linking invitations is to see who is providing links to other highly ranked websites competing for the same target market as yourself. Fortunately the major search engines provide a search query that allows you check incoming links to any website by making use of the following query command:
'link: ...............' query.

This varies slightly and the following examples should provide you with the necessary information when you type a domain name into each respective search engines' search field [*do not include the brackets '( )']:

Link check on www.google.com

Type in: *(link: ozewebhost.com) *Insert the domain name you wish to check.
eg: (link: mywebsite.com.au), (link: mycompetitorswebsite.com.au)

This lists approximately 68 pages linking to our site (check search results here).

Link check on www.yahoo.com

Type in: (link: ozewebhost.com)

This query will yield a result (468 pages) directly from the search engine database (check search result here).

By leaving out the 'space' eg. (link:ozewebhost.com) your query will go to the Yahoo Site Explorer (a recent innovation!) which appears to produce different results (check Yahoo Site Explorer results).

Link check on www.msn.com

Type in: (link:ozewebhost.com) *no space

The MSN search engine records 59 pages (check MSN results).

Reciprocal Linking ("You link to me & I'll link to you")

The old-fashioned 'link-swapping' used to work well in the past, but Google in particular tends to disregard many reciprocal links. To put it simply, it is very easy for a search engine's algorithm to compare the domain name of your inbound links with the domain names of your outbound links and discount the identical 'link swaps'. These days, almost everyone receives invitations to swap links with other sites. Many of these invitations come via the automated link-building software referred to above. Some invitations from sites with related content are worthy of consideration, but be aware of the dangers.

Use this checklist when evaluating potential linking partners. Be very wary if you get a single 'True' answer. If you get more than one, don't do it:

1. Their site has no realistic association to your subject matter.
2. The page they put your link on cannot be reached by their site's standard navigation system. This means your link is on a 'blind' page that can never be reached by any of their visitors. This is simply a trick to get you to link to their site.
3. Pay careful attention to the page URL (specific web page address) and ensure it is not a mile long and several levels deep where search engines will never discover it.
4. The page looks like a neatly ploughed field with parallel columns of links to several hundred websites and no logical order, or categorisation of the links.
5. It's a simple link (as detailed in Linking Example 3 above) and a link only, with no description.
6. Signs that they will accept anything that provides evidence of being a "live" link. Genuine directories have strict criteria, care very much about the quality of sites they link to, and don't send people out begging for links.

Finally

Despite the negative publicity associated with link requests, there's definitely good reasons to seek them. Particularly if you see a website that offers something of value to your target audience. Remember that it's not the total number of links back to your website that contribute to your search engine rankings. What really counts is the location of the page where your URL is placed, the amount and quality of its neighboring links and whether or not the page is actually linked to the main domain at all. There's a lot more to linking and influence your search engine rankings than just a few basic guidelines. The absolutely the BEST WAY to gain inbound links is to create quality content on your website that other sites will want to link to. Once you have achieved that happy status, you'll find your search engine performance will go into 'over-drive'.

All the best with implementing your linking strategy, and feel free to contact me should you require any further advice.

John Crago

Tel: 1800 108 122

Skype ID: johncrago