Your Link Strategy
Almost all major spider-based search engines (Google,
AltaVista, Lycos, and HotBot for example) use the number and
quality of links to your site (link popularity) to help
determine ranking. After search engines and email, most people
will find your site by clicking through other Web sites. In
order to have a successful site then, you must have a
well-designed link strategy that accounts for search engines and
human visitors.
How search engines work
A search engine spider wants to know how useful your site is.
The more useful the site the more likely (in theory) it will
rank better than your competition. Aside from your content, the
spider may want to know if anyone else thinks your site is
useful. It then searches its database and scans all the pages
that are linked to your site. It checks the link text for
keywords and checks the value of the out-bound page. Along with
checking relevancy keywords on the out-bound page and assigns it
a value.
Don't be afraid to link out to other sites that are relevant
and can offer your users additional, solid information. Outbound
links can play an important role in how you serve your
customers and how search engines rank your site. Search
engines seem to gather quite a bit of information about your
site based on who you link TO and your customers will enjoy the
added benefit of you vast knowledge of your subject!
Link Exchange
Over the past few years, people have been attempting to
capitalize on the way search engines work by offering link
exchanges with other sites. As with this site, I offer a limited
number of link exchanges with sites that make sense to link out
to, primarily Web designer directories, search engine
optimizers, Webmaster tools, and, occasionally, other Web
developers' sites. In return, these sites have link pages with
my site on it.
These sites should be of some value to your customers and
should help search engines and real people to find your site in
turn. Links won't do anyone any good if the two sites are not
related in some way. A Web design shop's site would have greater
relevance to Lee J Ballard Dot Net and would therefore give it
more weight. After all, if other Web designers think my site is
worth linking to, then, perhaps, Lee J Ballard Dot Net has
something valuable to offer. On the other hand, a site dedicated
to horse breeding probably wouldn't be terribly credible or
useful to Lee J Ballard Dot Net.
Do not exchange links simply to garner better results with
search engines. Always make your links for your users, not
the search engines.
In-bound link value
Not all links are created equal. Some links may actually hurt
you.
"Link Farms" should be avoided at all cost. A link
farm is a site dedicated to placing any and all links in a
jumbled mess of page after page of unrelated links. A search
engine may be able to spot the attempt to artificially boost
outgoing links and penalize your site.
The value of an inbound link (a link from another site into
yours) is something you will have to give some serious thought.
Here are some questions you might need to answer before you
accept a link exchange:
- Are our sites somehow related? When you are
negotiating a link exchange, make sure your site is allied
in some way. There's no sense in exchanging links when sites
have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Simply put, make sure that your keywords show
up someplace in/on your link partner's site.
- What is the text and context of the link property for
the outbound link? Your link text (the anchor text)
should contain as many of your keywords as possible. This
allows the search engine to know more about the content of the
link and will, in theory, rank your site accordingly.
- How visible is the site? Is the site accessible to
your customers and does the page rank well in other search
engine? Don't be too hung up about this but, a page that
ranks higher in the search engine database may carry more
weight than one that is ranked lower. For Google users,
attempt to find pages with PageRank of 3 or better. Don't be
afraid to have lower ranked pages link to your site though
if you can see the value in it. Besides, a PR0 page may one
day become a PR6 page.
- Is the outbound link on a huge list a page with more
than 50 other links? A page with link after link may be
a link farm and search engines may disregard your link. More
importantly perhaps, real people will not want to scroll for
20 minutes to find your site. Again, if it's a related site
and you see the value, you may find it useful to have your
site listed on longer pages.
A special note on linking with "competition".
There's some debate over the validity of linking with your
competitor's site. If your competitor's site offers your
clientele something of value that you do not or perhaps, in your
judgment, the competitor's offers are weaker than yours, there
may be no reason not to exchange links. After all, your link is
on their site so there is a chance you can get customers from
your competitor as well. You may do this if getting a higher
search engine rank is more important than the loss of customers
to your competitor; this is a judgment you will need to make.
Your Goal
Your ultimate goal is to get real people to look at your
site, preferably paying customers. With this in mind, getting
links for the sake of it may not be the best for your site. Link
popularity is only one of many factors search engines use to
rank your page, so don't rely on in it to the exclusion of
building quality content into your site. In the end, that's what
people want (and search engines too!).
Conclusion
There is no magic pill when it comes to good search engine
ranking or getting people to come to your site but giving your
site a boost in link popularity might just give it the edge it
needs. There are, though, many factors you must weigh. Talk to
your Web professional in order to carefully lay out your
strategy. Don't be afraid to say "No" to link offers
if you feel it's not in your best interest. On the other hand,
don't be afraid to exchange links with a very low ranked page if
you can see some value in it. The key is to negotiate a good
deal between webmasters. Be patient. This is a long-term
investment in time and energy.
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