Importance Of
Linking Building For SEO
-- by Paul Coulter, http://www.ekonline.com
-- http://www.redtienda.com/english/newsletter104.htm#1The easiest way of
improving your ranking in the search engines is
to let them know that your site is important. How
do you do that? Well, the best way is through the
process of link building. Link building is the
practice of encouraging other websites to link to
your own website. If other websites are linking
to your website, your “link popularity”
will increase, search engines will deem your
website important, and in turn, you should
receive more traffic. Link building is a time
consuming task, and it is for this reason that
most all websites rank so poorly in the search
engines. Many website owners are unaware that
link popularity can have such an effect on their
search engine rankings. This is good new for you.
Start building your links now and establish your
“web cred”.
Importance
of Page Rank
Google,
the Internet’s most popular search engine,
measures a website’s link popularity through
the use of Page Rank. To view a website’s
Page Rank, just download the Google Toolbar. The
toolbar will display the Page Rank of every
website you visit, measured as a little green
bar. A website’s Page Rank can vary from a
low of zero to a high of 10. Don’t worry if
your website has a low, or no Page Rank. Many
websites only have a Page Rank of 1 or 2, but the
Internet’s most popular websites possess a
Page Rank of 8 or 9.
Quality
Counts
Search
engines are not just looking for the number of
links that point to a website. The most important
aspect of the process is obtaining quality links.
Quality links are links from website that possess
a high Page Rank. Obtaining a link from a website
with a high Page Rank is best, although any site
with 1 or above is beneficial. Search engines
also consider the theme of a website which links
to you. It is best to get links from websites
that are associated with the industry in which
you do business. For example, my trade is website
design; therefore, I work to obtain the majority
of my links from other web design related
websites.
Getting
Links
One of
the best ways to advance your link popularity is
to offer quality and informative content to your
visitors and hope for natural links. If they find
the information interesting enough, they will
naturally link their website to your own.
Directory
submissions are probably the fastest and easiest
way to obtain some inbound links. But, because
Internet directories link to thousands of other
websites, the value that they can add to your
Page Rank gets diluted by all the other links.
The one must-submit-to directory is The Open
Project Directory (http://www.dmoz.org). After this, it
is best to search for smaller niche or local
directories. Submitting your website to Canadian,
Ontario, and even Windsor web directories will
help let the search engines know which region(s)
you are servicing. Then, you should submit to
industry related directories to indicate to the
search engines your line of business. A Google
search can help you find these types of
directories.
If you
feel that you have a knack for writing, a good
way to generate inbound links to your website is
to write articles. These articles can then be
submitted to article syndication websites, where
other webmasters are free to use your article on
their website. But, there’s a catch –
they must provide a link back to your website in
return for using the article. If you don’t
have the time or drive to write an article, but
you participate in an industry related discussion
forum, you’re in luck. Just remember to
include a link to your website in your signature.
The last
way to generate quality inbound links is through
reciprocal linking. This type of strategy
involves contacting other webmasters and
proposing a link exchange. Find some
non-competitive, but related websites and simply
e-mail them to see if they are interested.
It’s best to already have their link on a
page in your website before the proposition.
Linking
Text Is Important
When
employing any of the above linking approaches, it
is imperative that you try to use targeted key
words as part your link. The search engines read
this text to determine what your website is all
about. If your website involves “Red
Widgets”, try to use this as part of your
link text.
Conclusion
Link
popularity is very important when attempting to
rank well in the search engines. Link analysis is
only going to get more important to search
engines, not less.
This type
of strategy is resistant to manipulation and
justifiable way to measure a website’s
importance. Therefore, the link building process
must be given high priority in your Internet
marketing efforts, and since it takes time, the
sooner you begin the better.
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