Link
Building For Top Search Engine Placement (Part 1)
© 2003 By
Dave
Davies
For many, the idea of optimizing a website for top search
engine placement means entering some META tags, maybe
titling the page appropriately, and then you're done. A long
time ago, in an SEO galaxy far FAR away, this tactic worked.
Unfortunately for those optimizing their websites, and
fortunately for those using search engines to find
information, this is no longer the case.
There are now some 80+ factors of your website that are
taken into consideration when determining the ranking of
your website. Everything from titles and META's to content
and ALT tags are weighed and analyzed when your placement on
the search engines is determined. In a recent article by
Ross Dunn, CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement, he
addressed the fundamentals of optimizing your web pages. The
article he wrote was entitled A
Ten Minute Search Engine Optimization and can be found
on the StepForth website.
This article addresses many of the internal factors taken
into account in determining your ranking. Another factor
which has to be taken very seriously is the external links
to your website. Links to your site are not the most
important factor in determining your ranking and you will
have to have a well-optimized site to rank well, however,
when all else is equal (i.e. when your competitors also have
well-optimized sites) this can be the determining factor
between being found and being buried in the search engine
rankings.
BEAT the Cold Winter of 2007 ARIZONA'S NEWEST WONDER
Kartchner Caverns State Park opened in 1999. This stunning limestone cave system is one of the top in the world. Visit Sunny Southwest this cold winter |
Links
That Work
The first consideration you have to make in your
link-building efforts is who should be linking to you and
whom you should link to. These are two separate
considerations and despite the fact that you will be working
on both at the same time, they must be considered
independently.
Who
Should Link To You? (Incoming Links)
When you are looking for sites to link to you there are five
questions that you must ask yourself:
1) Do they compete with you? While you can try to
request a link from a site that provides the same or similar
products and services that you do, this is generally a waste
of time that could be spent finding legitimate links from
sites that would like to promote your product or service.
2) Does their site relate to your content? If you
have a site promoting carpet cleaning products, a link from
a hair salon will not be of much benefit. Google and the
other major search engines look for content relationship
when determining the value of a link. If the content of the
two sites is totally unrelated the link is given very little
weight if any. Focus only on attaining links from sites
relevant to your own.
3) How does Google rate the site? Google has come
out with a fantastic tool called the Google Toolbar. The
advanced version of the toolbar includes the PageRank of the
site you are currently visiting. Without getting into a long
description of PageRank (see Google's definition), the
higher the number the better (it is a ranking out of 10
where traditionally anything above 4 is good and anything
above 6 is excellent. If Google rates the site well then the
link will be more valued than from a site that Google rates
poorly. When looking for links give more time and attention
to those with PageRanks of 4 or higher. The Google Toolbar
is a fr'ee download
available from Google at.
4) Will they require a reciprocal link? Whether
the site will require a reciprocal link or not is a serious
consideration. The more links to your site that you have
that are not reciprocated the better. These links are given
added weight. This area will be addressed further below.
5) How many links on the page? How many links are
on the page that will link to you, and where your link will
be placed is another serious consideration. If your link
from their site will be on a page with 100 other links then
the value of the link itself is greatly reduced. Also,
whether your link will be on the top of the page or the
bottom will also determine the value of the link itself
BEAT the Cold Winter of 2007 ARIZONA'S NEWEST WONDER
Kartchner Caverns State Park opened in 1999. This stunning limestone cave system is one of the top in the world. Visit Sunny Southwest this cold winter |
This may be a lot to consider, however it can save you
enormous amounts of time and frustration. People will often
work for hours to attain a link from a site they like when
in reality the site has a low PageRank and the link won't
even carry much weight as far as search engine placement is
concerned.
It is only responsible to note that as a general rule any
relevant inbound link will help somewhat. If, in your
travels, you find a related site with a PageRank of 2 that
is very simple to get a link from, it's well worth your time
to do so given that that time taken is only about 5 minutes.
Not all link building is this simple and it's in the more
advanced efforts (email communications with the webmaster
for example) that you will want to apply the above noted
"rules".
Who
Should You Link To? (Outgoing Links)
The question, "who should you link to?" is
a very serious one and can have significant repercussions on
your search engine placement. If you are linking to sites,
this is your way of saying, "This site is highly
relevant to mine and that my visitors will enjoy the content
on it." For this reason there are a number of
considerations that have to be made when determining whether
reciprocal links are in your best interest. Factors of the
website that should be considered when determining whether
to link to that website are:
1) Is the site's content related to yours? Like
incoming links (sites linking to you), the relevancy of the
content on both sites should be high. If you have a number
of links from your site to websites that are completely
unrelated to you, the value of these links is negligible and
further, will reduce the perceived value of your site.
2) Does the site compete with you? In this case it
is your interests, not those of the other webmaster, which
must be taken into account. Do you want to link to a site
that provides the same or similar products/services as you?
Unless the site is willing to reciprocate the link and they
have a very high PageRank it is probably not wise to give
your visitors the opportunity to go to the site of a
competitor.
3) What is their PageRank? Many people falsely
believe that any outbound link will hurt your placement.
This is simply not the case. Poor link-building is the cause
of this misconception, not the link itself. When you are
determining whether to link to another site, take a look at
the PageRank it has been assigned by Google. Like the boost
this gives to your site in the incoming links, so too can
this have a positive effect on your outbound links. If all
of your outbound links are to highly regarded sites (by the
search engines) and their content is relevant to yours then
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Article by Dave Davies, Marketing Manager, StepForth
Search Engine Placement Inc.
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