Most sites have a links page, why? Well, there are two very important reasons why a web developer should consider having a links page.
1 Search Engine Optimization or SEO is just one way to get search engines to notice that you are there. Another thing that you should not neglect if you want your website to stand out is obtaining links.
2 Your website offers a service to your visitors: links provide them with other sites of interest that they may want to visit. Although the retail industry might say they want people to stay on their site, rather than go elsewhere, carefully chosen links can make people even more interested in the product you’re selling! You may have to think laterally!
In the eyes of a search engine there definitely seems to be good links and bad links. Good links will take you higher in page rankings and to the top of listings, bad links will at best be ignored and at worst could work against you and your site will appear in a much lower list.
– A good link is one from a site that is highly relevant to yours and has a good page rank.
– A bad link is one from an obvious link farm and does not have contextual links to your sites.
Before we go any further, let’s talk a bit about page rank. Page Rank is the ranking that Google gives to the pages of a website and shows their importance as seen by Google. The Google Toolbar, which can be obtained from http://toolbar.google.com for free, is a useful tool as it can display the page rank of any web page you are viewing. A site’s page rank (or PR) ranges from 0 to 10: 0 is where you start, 10 would be exceptional! Although Google keeps the algorithms for calculating PR very close to their chests, the progression through the numbers is probably on a logarithmic scale, meaning a site ranked 2 is many times more important than one ranked 1, not only 1 point.
When you’re building links, you should try to get links to your site from sites with a higher page rank than yours. Links from sites with good PR will immediately tell search engines that yours is a site worth indexing! The more links the better!
So should you only link to sites with higher PR? Well, if everyone practiced this, the chances of you getting links to your embryonic site would be zero! A site may be 0 today, but that site may also be working hard to increase its ranking and you may benefit from its progress. Also, remind your human visitors, a site can be useful to them, even if it’s not for its purpose of increasing your rankings! So golden rules to remember:
,,Ï?n?nAim to get links from high ranking pages
,,Ï?n?nPlace links from any site that is highly relevant to yours.
First think about the sites that would be useful for your visitors to be able to access from your site. For example, if it’s a niche site, are there any national organizations that promote your sport, hobby, or industry? Your first step will be to email these organizations and ask if you can reciprocate with them.
Now this can be a bit of a David and Goliath situation, with many people feeling discouraged because they think their immature new website is too small. You may not get any response to your emails, you may get a response that rejects you, but you may find a national organization with a good page ranking that agrees to link to you! To be very pleased with this!
Immediately someone agrees to reciprocate with you, place your link on your website, just in case you decide to check it out!
Now, think again about your customers or visitors – even if the big organizations have refused to link to you on their site, it may still be useful to link to them on yours for your visitor’s information. Always remember that the main goal of getting website traffic is to get and keep loyal customers or visitors, not just to attract search engine bots!
Now the hard work begins. Search the web for sites on the same topic as yours, but obviously NOT competitors. Keeping an eye on the Google toolbar, look for sites that have a better page rank than yours; Ideally, the websites you are looking for will be ranked between 4 and 5 (higher ranking sites can be a bit snobbish towards newbie sites).
What about the people who supply you with goods and services? Can they bond with yours? What about the clients? Try to think outside the box here – if you have a sports site, how about a link to a local photographer?
Sometimes you can do some good research away from the computer (yes, sometimes you can turn it off!). Trade magazines are often a good start: write to any email address and ask for a reciprocal link. It’s possible that even if they don’t have a links page, they may decide to add one! It never hurts to ask!
When you’re looking at websites, check to see if they have a links page. If they do, you may find a form where you can submit your website details requesting to be added to your links page or a site suggestion button to add a new link to make it easy to add your site . You may need to email a website if they don’t appear to be polling links. Don’t be discouraged if there isn’t a relevant category to list your site in; you can always add more categories. If you don’t ask, you don’t get! If you ask, you can succeed!
So don’t worry about sending emails and asking for reciprocal links, but be sure to post the links you promised! This can lead you to do some thinking about your site – some people don’t want to have their link at the bottom of a very long page. You should consider rotating the banners so you can display more links, but keep the page simple. You should also restrict non-relevant links.
If you know your theme, show it! And one of the best ways is to join a forum. When posting or replying to a forum topic, always use a signature with your website address; If forum users like what they read about you, they’ll click the ljnk link to visit your website, and voila – you’ve got more links to come. on your site! If your hosting company has a user forum, there may be a section where you can showcase your new site; if so, you will get multiple hits through this one. Charming links for search engines and fodder for link spiders!
Also, if you visit the guestbook of a relevant site, you can also leave your website address there. BUT PLEASE ONLY IF IT IS A RELEVANT SITE!
Article writing as a technique for building links and traffic is a less obvious area that many people don’t know or understand.
Presumably you are an expert in your area, or at least have useful information to share with others. So write an article! Not sure if you can? Well, start with your site’s content as a base; you may have already done the hard work. Can’t think of a topic? Well, think laterally again. If you sell artistic candles, for example, how about an article on the history of candle making? If you think long enough, there’s probably something you can write about! You did need to do some research, but the articles will really help you drive traffic and rankings. (And of course you can use them as content on your own site!)
Articles don’t have to be long; in fact, the shorter the better. Probably no more than 600 to 1000 words. What you want to do in your article is write about something related to your site.
There are now a number of websites that will publish your article for you. Other websites can use your article for free, but they HAVE to include the author’s details, which of course means your website’s details. People who use your article will form links to your site – the more different sites that use it, the better the links!
Better yet, you can submit your article to any number of article sites. Ezine Articles is one of the biggest, but any Google search will reveal many others.
Now, no one can pretend that this is an easy activity, it takes time. No one is going to use your article if it is not well thought out and tells them something new. It shouldn’t be boring either. But article submission is a really great way to improve your website’s search engine ranking, and it shouldn’t be ignored.
Of course, articles are also important resources for webmasters in another way: free content for your site! There are sites out there that deal with a whole host of topics, and in themselves they can be very helpful and informative! Free web design articles, for example, can give you other tips and advice for getting the most out of your website.
If you use an article, you must include the author’s full biography and a link to your site. But the benefit to you is ready-made, hopefully keyword-rich content that will attract search engine bots like bees to honey!
Web rings are another way to build links; again, check the page rank of the web ring you are joining. Web rings provide you with links and also provide your human visitors with other sites of interest that they may want to visit.
Let’s face it: website design and publishing is actually a lot harder work than you probably thought when you started designing your homepage. But there is nothing more demoralizing than having designed a wonderful site that you are extremely proud of, only to discover that it has no visitors!
You probably want to spend all your time tweaking your existing pages and putting up new ones, and anything that takes you away from this will suffer, but if you want a successful website, link building is something you have to do. .
The best advice is to set aside one day a week for what we should call your marketing activities. Link building, along with SEO, are extremely tedious activities. Incorporate SEO into the way you build your pages from the start (or, in other words, consider not only the impact on the human eye while designing your page, but also consider spiders and bots at the same time!). And use your day a week to build links.
A piece of advice from experienced developers in this area is not to aim to get hundreds of links in a short space of time; this will again raise suspicion in search engines. Instead, just try to get a quality link at least once a month.
Website marketing is not a short sprint, it’s more like a marathon. Many will start the race, but a great number will fall by the wayside. But if you recognize that it will be hard work and keep trying, you will reach the end. There will come a time when you will receive a request from a reputable and well ranked website, asking for a reciprocal link! That may not be the end of it, but rest assured, it will give you a big boost, and then you’ll know that most of your hard work will have been worth it!