Mon, 12 Mar 2007 04:46:01 by Jayson Munday
Linking is often said to be a crucial part of your SEO campaign. Although we see the importance of this strategy, nearly everyone gets it wrong.
So what makes a successful linking building campaign? Who should you be linking to, and probably even more importantly who should you let link to you? These questions have been asked time and time again by anyone who has been trying to promote their website.
Although the benefits are easily spotted;
1. Help you gain rankings in the search engines
2. Drive more traffic to your site
3. Help you build trust
The good linking strategies are not.
Here are several do’s and don’ts to help you on your way:
Do’s
1. Link to related sites. Although sometimes this one is hard to grasp, linking to your competitors can benefit your site. By linking to similar sites, you show the search engines that you are apart of that online community.
2. Link your pages internally, use keywords and phrases to link your pages together throughout your site.
3. Try and deep link your pages, don’t just link everything to your homepage.
4. Try and link to sites with a high “authority”. By linking to these sites with high importance you show that your site is a trusted source of information.
5. Check your backlinks; remove any dead links, or sites that have changed away from the issue.
6. Try and link to local sites, they seem to have more weight.
Don’ts
1. Do not link to irrelevant sites, for example why would a bakery link to an optometrist?
2. Do not join a link farm! Know who you are linking to, believe me it is important.
3. Do not send out mass emails to webmasters asking for a reciprocal link. Research who you want to link to, and look at the benefits that link can have to the user.
4. Before you link to a site, check its inbound links. If no-one is linking to it there must be reason. The site obviously has no trust or reputation.
5. Do not get caught up in Google’s Page Rank. Although the Page Rank system can give you a quick “authority” check, don’t rely on it, for example Google News has a Page Rank of 0.
I hope these tips help; link building is probably the most labour intensive part of any SEO campaign. And it takes hours of effort for it to pay off. But when it does, it can benefit your site immensely.
Probably the most important part of linking is to simply know who you are linking to.
Good luck and happy linking.
Jayson Munday
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
