Website Development
Seven Red Hot Tips for Linking
by:
Gareth Davies
1. Vary
the keywords in your link ‘anchor’ text
Unless
you provide only one product or service the chances are you will want
to rank for many key phrases. One way to help achieve this objective
is to change the link text you want all new sites to use periodically.
Vary the anchor text slightly each time and by doing so you can cover
more of your targeted key phrases. This approach can help your site
rank for many keywords rather than just one or two.
If you
do only provide one product or service on your web site it is still
important to vary anchor text. If you sell ‘blue widgets’ then you
could also use link text like ‘cheap blue widgets’ or ‘blue widget
store’. This means your links take on a more natural feel and are much
less likely to be penalised or filtered out by search engines for
being ‘fake links’.
2. Set
up your link information differently - create a link in context
Typically people set up their link information in a very similar way,
however you could offer your link information with the hyperlink
inside the description instead of at the beginning.
Imagine
this is a description about your web site on a partner’s link page.
Instead of a typical hyperlink followed by a description you could
write a sentence describing your web site and then place “your
descriptive hyperlink” inside it.
One
reason for doing this is that it reads more naturally and search
engines may value the link higher as it reads more like a narrative.
Many webmasters will be happy to accept this style even if some do
not. To cover yourself offer the link in context as a second option
along with your regular link information, that way if some sites can’t
support the layout you still get your link.
3. Vary
where your links point
Try to
vary where link partners point to on your site. It’s fine to have the
majority of links pointing into your home page, however it can be
beneficial to have some links pointing to other key pages on your web
site as well. Taking this approach balances out your linking and can
help raise the profile of more pages on your web site.
4. How
to find potential link partners from your competitors
If a
web site links to your competitors it may also link to yours, and in
order to find these potential link partners you can use search
engines. Not so long ago Google was useful for getting a lot of back
link information about a site. Recently Google’s back link data is a
lot less forthcoming and it now tends to show only a tiny percentage
of the sites that are linking combined with a lot of internal link
data. Whether the few web sites Google shows us are the ones it finds
important or whether they are in fact red herrings we cannot say for
certain. I would assume the latter.
Currently Yahoo is a better portal to check for backlinks. To generate
a list of linking web sites on Yahoo simply go to http://www.yahoo.com
and type the following into the Yahoo search bar.
linkdomain:www.mycompetitorwebsite.com
This
will deliver up to date link information as read by Yahoo. The only
downside with the information is that one site may appear many times
if it is giving multiple links.
5.
Alternate your description text
This is
often overlooked, but there is no real advantage to be had if the
description text supporting your inbound links is always identical. To
avoid the possibility of a description ever being seen as ‘duplicate
content’ alternate it when you can. If you combine it with varied
anchor text [as in tip 1] you’re heading in the right direction.
6. Link
to good related content from your web site
It
seems like an obvious thing to say, but with so many people caught up
in link exchanging you sometimes wonder if we’re losing site of the
basics. If you have something useful to say on your site and can back
it up with a useful link to another web site then do so. Not every
link has to be reciprocated. This resourceful linking will allow your
visitors to read around the subject. Linking to informative related
content is useful for visitors and search engines quite like it too.
7. Seek
out directory links
Links
from good web directories can be some of the best links you can get
for your web site. Aaron Wall has a ‘directory of directories’ at
http://www.directoryarchives.com where you will find a great selection
of search engine friendly directories. Some of the directories are
free to get listed in whilst others may charge a fee.
by-http://www.garethsketty.com
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