Links – Hard To Get But Oh So Valuable
SEO Orlando – Link Strategy
Linking Connects You With The WWW
The idea is to let people know about your website right? Search Engine Optimization results depend on three major areas, content, social media and links. Links are the stuff that connects the individual sites to the internet and lets Google know what stuff is most important. Theory is that if your site is important enough that other sites link to it, there must be value in your site worth noting. But because of the value of links, schemes and misuse to gain more links are common.
Remember, never pay a service to provide links or pay for links at all if you can help it. Yes, that still may work in some cases – but Google has made it clear that paid links and link farms that exchange and provide links is definitely not approved of and may be penalized. It is better to look for links that relate to your site and are legitimate. For instance, a childcare site having a list of pediatricians would make sense because both services relate to children.
Building quality links may be the #1 thing you can do to add to your ranking. Each link has its own value based on “Page Rank” and “Popularity”.
There Are 3 Basic Types of Links
Outbound Links – This means you put a link, or list of links on your site to other sites. It may be helpful for your visitors to find an easy way to leave your site, but did you really want to do that? These kind of links do absolutely nothing for your SEO efforts.
Reciprocal Links – This means you link to someone and they are also linked back to you. Search Engines know that this is arranged and it means much less than an inbound link. Buying or trading in links is highly discouraged and will be penalized. But most sites do have their share of these type of links and so should you. If your competition has no links and your sites are ranked about evenly, reciprocal links will actually help you win that battle.
Inbound Links – This is the best link you can get, a one way link to your site. This type of link can also be called a “backlink.” It tells the Search Engine that what you have to say is important enough to link to. What is the best way to build inbound links? When your site provides something interesting and of enough value that people want to link to it without you asking them too!
When You Post A Comment – Add A URL
Proper web etiquette dictates when and where it is appropriate to post your url (website address) in a signature after your comments. Let’s say for our SafeSlider.com client, I get an alert that a newspaper or magazine has published an article on break-ins through sliding doors. I make it a point to write an intelligent comment that is not just a sales pitch and then I sign it with my name and the domain name for SafeSlider.com – now when the audience for that article reads the comments, I am a respected source commenting on something that we know about. And of course we gain an inbound link and maybe some new visitors to our website. Bloggers and sites that allow comments can place what is called a “no follow” on your url, which will take any of the SEO value away. But the Page Rank of the post is not always blocked from being passed to your site, so it is a good practice to spend time posting and to become a good source of information by being active in blogs and posting relevant informative comments. And above all, don’t become a url spammer – just for the sake of publicizing your site!
Directory Listings Are Links Too
We have all been there, looking for a particular business and the way you end up finding it is through an online Yellow Page directory! Sure they have a website, but it is ranked so poorly, the directory comes up way ahead of their own business site. Submitting your information to regional or local internet directories is always a good idea. Yellow Page sites usually offer free listings and will increase the odds that new customers will find you. Do this manually, never opt for an automated solution to list you in directories. Yahoo of course has a paid “Local Search” directory, but with so many free listings available, the better value may be spending the time looking for the directories that make sense for your business.
Look for industry specific directories that relate to your content too. Chambers and organizations also are directory style listings that you can get in on. Remember the higher the Page Rank of the page that your url is shown on, the higher value that is passed on to you. Every time your website url is published, it forms a link back to your website, and that is a good thing. Make this an ongoing effort, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a high Search Engine ranking.
If you want more information on link building, check out how we use business citation link building to increase local search success.
PR – Public Relations via Press Releases
The online world has made it easy to get information out and publicized.
PR is not just the arena of highly paid professionals any more. Many bureaus and publications receive email or web based releases from all sources today. If it is worth reading, it might just get posted. Don’t neglect the local or regional publishers, they want fresh content too, so find the right person and submit your news! If you have a hyperlink in the message, guess what that gives you? Right, a highly valued Inbound Link to your site. Many sites even allow you to upload and comment on articles relative to your business and drive traffic to your blog or site for FREE. Press Releases done via the web can be a huge boost for your Search Engine Optimization.
Anchor Your Link With Keywords
Let’s say we wanted to put a link telling how good our logo design services are. See how we just attach the link to the “anchor” text that supports the relevance. This is a great way to increase the search engine optimization value of each link. Never attach links with “click here” which adds no unique value at all.
Do I Need To Submit My Site To Search Engines?
A common rule of thumb is for a new site to submit, but as soon as a site goes up that contains one link many of the engines will begin recognizing it. Since Google, MSN and Yahoo are the three main engines you need to be concerned with don’t be fooled into thinking that registering with 1000’s of Search Engines will help you – it can actually hurt you. You don’t need a “submission service” when you can do it yourself in minutes. Never use an automated service to “Submit Your Site to all the Search Engines.” If all of a sudden your site has a huge increase in links you may get penalized and actually drop in rankings because you tried to artificially manipulate the results. If you have at least one link to another site, your site will automatically be indexed. If your site is already existing, chances are pretty good that you already have been “submitted” and indexed. If you do buy an automated submission service, one thing you will be guaranteed to get – tons of new email spam.
If You Want To Make Sure That You Are Submitted Do It Yourself!
Open Directory Project – FREE – No guarantee that you will get listed, but it is worth a try. Read instructions and submit, DMOZ partners with AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, etc.
How Can I See What Links A Site Has?
To find the links to a particular site, you will typically use a search like:
“link:www.yourdomainname.com” or “links:http://www.yourdomainname.com”. This should return a list of some of the sites that link to the domain. This works better in Yahoo than it does in Google. There are professional software tools that we use for SEO that will tell us the exact links that exist and the PR value that they pass on to the site being examined.
Lots Of Ways To Get The Word Out!
pintrest.com – browse and share pictures
instagram – share photos
reddit.com – submit and browse articles
digg.com – submit and browse information
prweb.com – press releases – paid service
prnewschannel.com – press releases – paid service
delicious.com – social bookmarking
articlesbase.com – publish articles free