Search engine marketing and keyword optimization.
Chapter 5
Enlarge And Enhance Link Strategy
There are four areas of linking that are vital for a long term strategy for search engine success.
- Clean internal linking causes users to flow through the site in a natural manner. Approach your site once a month like you have never been there before. What kind of experience do you have? Is it easy to understand? Does it get you easily to the place where you can respond to the offer of the site.
- Your internal linking structure tells the search engines which are the most important pages of your site. The pages with the most links to them from other pages within the site means that the target pages are more vital ones. Be sure to you use text links and use your keyword phrases as the text links to other pages whenever possible.
- Inbound links from other sites are a great referral of pre-qualified leads. First, it shows they think your Website has value for their customers and the customers who follow the link are more likely to be ones that are more interested in your products or services than the casual searcher.
- Inbound links are also a vote from other sites that you are a quality site that the search engine should take note of. Think politics for a minute. The winner in an election is the one with the most votes. A link to you is a vote for the page it is linked to. The rest of Chapter 5 will flesh out this part of your long term strategy for search engine success.
- Text links are what search engines follow. So make sure you have text links to all of your relevant pages. A site map is one way to make sure that all the pages are linked to. Make your text site map only one level down in your directory so the search engine only has to go two levels to find all links. http://www.semconsultation.com/sitemap.html is a good example.
A high number of quality incoming links to your pages is what makes up “link popularity” and also increases your “PageRank” at Google. These are both vital to achieving good ranking. Most search engines follow the link structures and the click-thru’s of the Websites in their index. The important word is “quality”.
What are the pre qualifiers to sites you want to link to you? Those who meet the following criteria.
- Same theme focus as yours. You need links that are related to your area.
- A PageRank in Google of at least 4/10.
- Popular sites with lots of links to them.
- Authorities in the field when possible. Authority sites are ones with more outgoing links than incoming links.
- Make sure that the sites linking to you have their pages indexed in the search engines. Also make sure that their links page to you is indexed. Go to the search box in Google, Yahoo!, and MSN and type in site:www.mydomain.com to find what pages are indexed.
- It is good to have sites linking to you that have a good number of other sites linking to them. At least 30 sites linking to them is preferable. Go to the search box in Google and MSN and type in link:www.mydomain.com. In Yahoo! type in links:www.weddingsbythesea.com
Where do you look to find good sites to link to you? Consider the following list.
- Trade, business or industry related directories
- Yahoo directory and the Google Directory in your field.
- Suppliers, customers, partners and other sites related to you.
- Websites that link to your competitors. Use the Google Bar and check the Backward Links to your competitors and any other sites with a high PageRank.
- Two important programs to consider to help with this process: Zeus at and OptiLink. Find links to them and other SEO products at http://www.semconsultation.com/tools.html
- Link Hounds link building resources is a good reference domain.
As for the links themselves, it's good if some of the other companies to link to you use a text link of your keyword phrase, rather than your company URL. Remember our realtors HTML meta name Description? “Glenn Happy is the San Francisco real estate professional that understands the buyer and sellers needs for property for sale in Northern California”. There are several options for this text. Put the link on “San Francisco real estate” or “property for sale in Northern California”.
You are now ready to announce or re-announce your pages to the search engines and directories. Proceed to Chapter 6, Present Your Pages To The Search Engines and Directories.
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