Web Design Discussion

If you wish to rank well for your web site you need to study your competitors. The top ranked sites have often been around for years and have built a lot of incoming links from a variety of sources.

How to analyze the links of the top 10 web sites:

1. Find the top 10 web sites in Google

Google is the most popular search engine and returns the most web sites for a search, therefore websites that rank at the top in Google are well worth analyzing. Do a search on Google for your most completive keywords and make a list of the top 10 websites on the page. Do the same for less competitive keywords, particularly if you did not get enough information from the previous exercise.

2. Analyze each of the top 10 websites in your industry

Here is a list of the type of searches you can do to find web sites that may link to your web site that may be related to yours and share the same keywords:

“Suggest link” +”keyword”

“Suggest a link” +”keyword”

“Suggest site” + “keyword”

“Suggest a site” + “keyword”

“Suggest URL” +”keyword”

“Suggest a URL” +”keyword”

“Add link” +”keyword”

“Suggest an URL” +”keyword”

“Add a link” +”keyword”

“Add site” +”keyword”

“Add a site” +”keyword”

“Add URL” +”keyword”

“Add a URL” +”keyword”

“Add an URL” +”keyword”

“Submit link” +”keyword”

“Submit a link” +”keyword”

“Submit site” +”keyword”

“Submit a site” +”keyword”

“Submit URL” +”keyword”

“Submit a URL” +”keyword”

“Submit an URL” +”keyword”

“favorite links” +”keyword”

“cool sites” +”keyword”

“cool places” +”keyword”

directory +”keyword”

directorys +”keyword”

directories +”keyword”

“your location” +”add url”

“your location” +directory

“your location” +”submit site”

“recommended links” +”keyword”

“your location” +”suggest a site”

3. Find directories your competitors have submitted to

Do a backlink check on competing sites. You will often find a number of specialized directories where your competitors have submitted a link to. After compiling a list of these directories from a few top ranked web sites, submit your own web site to these same directories. This will help increase the number of incoming links to your website and boost your search engine rankings.

Resource

To find the backlinks for competing web sites or your own, enter.. link:http://www.domainname.com in the Yahoo search box. It will find the links within your web site (internal links) and the web sites that are linking to yours (external links).

Reciprocal link exchanges must be well thought out otherwise your web site may get penalized.

I did not place reciprocal link exchange at the top of my list because link exchange has been abused to produce link schemes. This is where site owners have generated thousands of links from unrelated web sites.

Search engines have begun to ignore web sites that participate in any type linking whose purpose is just to gain high search engine rankings and does not serve the benefit of visitors to your web site.

When to exchange links

You should only exchange links with websites that compliment your own. For example if I sell camping equipment I may exchange links with sites that offer good places to camp.

On the other hand, if a gambling site offered several hundred dollars to place a link on your website, should you participate?

Well, the money would be tempting but it could result in Google penalizing your site. It will then take years to get your high rankings back.

Procedure

a. Create a links or resource page

This page should provide all the relevant resources visitors go to for information not included on your site.

b. Place the link from the site you wish to exchange links with on your site first.

Make sure you include appropriate link text within the link ie if the site is on “best hiking trails in Maryland” include this in your link text. Under the link should be a brief description of his site.

c. Send an email to the site owner.

Outline all the benefits of exchanging links with you, and that you have already placed his link on your site (include the address of the link page). Make sure his link is featured prominently on the page.

d. Provide the HTML code of your web site link

Include the exact HTML code of the information you want placed on his site, so he can just copy and paste it into his own. It should include a brief description of your offer and the URL of your site should contain anchor text.

e. Wait for a response

If you don’t get a response within 3 days try sending your request again 2 more times. If there is no response, remove his link from your page.

Tip

Some site owners delete any link exchange request automatically so this task can be very time consuming. An alternative method to this is to offer a well written article that can be placed on their site or in a newsletter. You may get a better response and you won’t have to ask for a link back.

Internal Linking is another great strategy for increasing link popularity

This refers to the links within your web site.

1. Repair broken links

Make sure you don’t have any broken links within your site otherwise the search engines won’t be able to access all your pages. Ideally all pages should be found within 3 clicks of your home page. If not, your visitor may lose his patience and click elsewhere.

2. Make your links search engine friendly.

If you are linking to a page on “camping stoves” use the anchor text: camping stoves instead of writing “click here.” Include targeted keywords in your anchor text. This will give your web page more authority on the subject.

3. Link to less popular pages

Within a web site are pages that receive a lot of traffic (ie home page) and some that are less popular because they are more deeply located within your site. Link to these pages from the popular pages. This will help build their link popularity and also bring traffic to them.

4. Create a site map

A site map consists of all the links on your web site. Typically it’s located in your navigation bar. Search engines love site maps because they can crawl all your web pages from the site map page. It also helps your visitors to quickly navigate your whole web site.

5. Prevent link leakage

Don’t link out to many sites from one page as this will result in link leakage. Google and other search engines place more authority on pages that have many incoming links (compared to outgoing links). Only link to web sites that compliment your content. This enables visitors to read more information when visiting the links you provided rather than leaving your site and doing their own research..

Tip

You can keep visitors on the web page containing the outgoing links by opening them in a new window.

Building links to your web site is one of the most effective strategies for attaining high rankings in the search engines however it can be a long slow process if not done correctly. Search engines determine the popularity of your site by the number and quality of sites that link to yours. The greater the number of incoming links the higher your rankings.

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Many site owners make the mistake of getting links from web sites not related to their own. They try to get as many links as possible from any person that wants to exchange links.

This is big mistake.

Your site will most likely lose its rankings and/or be banned from the search engines.

Why?

This is because search engines want to produce focused, relevant results to searches. It still doesn’t happen often enough because you still get results that are not related to your searches.

What is Link Optimization?

This means creating, finding links and content that have high value. If your web site has high quality content, other site owners will want to link to it automatically. If you have a new web site, you will want to find high quality sites that can link to yours. These are usually sites that have been on the Net for years, have high rankings and get a lot of traffic.

Link value

The quality of the links pointing to your site is superior to the number of links. However if you get a large number of high quality links from other sites that is better than just having a few.

Example:

An article on “link optimization” gets placed on a web site that has a PR (page rank) of 7 whereas your web site only has a PR value of 2. The PR7 site will get found faster, indexed faster, and receive better search engine exposure (higher rankings) than the PR2 web site.

Explanation

The link in the resource box of your article links back to your web site. The high ranking web site passes on its authority to your web site thus increasing your own “authority” and with time, your overall rankings.

A Note about Page Rank

Your site’s Page Rank can be viewed by observing the green line in the Google Toolbar. Sites that have a high PR(ie PR 6-10) will generally rank higher than sites less than PR6. Google claims PR is not significant anymore however the Google web site has a PR value of 10.

Search Engine Optimization Services

Herman Drost is a SEO specialist. He offers search engine optimization services that are based on the total number of pages to be optimized, competitiveness of the keywords targeted, actual SEO work required to optimize the site for those search terms, and the estimated time necessary to acquire a competitive search engine position.

Getting links to your web site is one of the most important factors for increasing your search engine rankings. The quality and number of links pointing to your site determine how fast your site boosts its rankings. Link building should be incorporated in the marketing pan of your web site and be done on a consistent basis.

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Many site owners participate in link exchange campaigns to boost their link popularity. This can be very time consuming because you need to continually contact other site owners and wait for their response. Often you won’t get any response and therefore waste your precious time. Incorporating anchor text in your link building campaign will save you time because it provides high quality backlinks to your web site.

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To read Part 1 please visit Link Popularity - Types of Links, Their Purpose and How to Get Them

3. Outgoing Links (also known as outbound links)

These are links that only go to sites outside of your own. Their purpose is to provide more information to visitors that come to your site. Don’t link to sites unrelated to your own as Google may view it as artificially inflating your site to achieve high rankings.

Here’s an excerpt from Goggle’s Webmaster Guidelines regarding reciprocal link exchanges:

“Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or Page Rank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links”.

Here’s an example of how to contact a site owner to exchange links:

If you have a web page about “what you need for camping”, then include links to sites that have your favorite local camping areas. Your visitors will love you for it and may even link to this page from their web site because you offered comprehensive and valuable information about camping.

4. Internal Links

These are links contained with your site’s architecture. When building your navigation structure, make sure you link all internal pages to your home page. Use the full URL (i.e. http://www.domain.com/page.html) in your links. Internal pages linking back to your home page viewed as backlinks to your site. This will contribute to your site’s rankings.

Are you confused about all the different types of links you need to acquire to boost the link popularity of your web site? Let me endeavor to straighten this out by discussing the purpose and definition of each type of link and how to get it.

Purpose of Link Building

Boost search engine rankings
Increase web site traffic
Improve page rank
Quick and deep indexing of web pages
Create multiple entry points to your web site

Read Top 10 Benefits of Link Building

Types of Links

1. Non-Reciprocal Links (often called incoming links, backlinks, inbound links, inlinks, inward links)

These are incoming links pointing to your website which do not require a link to be exchanged. The number and quality of incoming links determines the popularity of your web site in the search engines.

A couple of ways to get backlinks is submitting your site to directories or writing articles. You can include a non-reciprocal link in the resource box of your article.

2. Reciprocal Links (also known as “link swaps”, “link exchanges” and “link partners”)

This is when you exchange links with another web site. You both agree to link to each other.
The number and quality of the sites that link to yours determine your rankings. It’s imperative to only exchange links with sites related to your own.

One method to find reciprocal links is to contact site owners by first placing a link to their site on your own site. Mention you have already done this in your email to them and where the link is located, and then ask the site owner to do the same for your site. If they don’t respond after contacting them 3 times, remove their link and look for another.

It can be a slow and laborious process but with persistence it pays off by getting better rankings and increasing your sales.

Read Top 10 Benefits of Link Popularity Building - Part I

Part 2

6. Multiple entry points

Building links to other pages within your web site creates multiple points for visitors to enter your web site. They will naturally visit the other pages of your site by following your navigation links.

7. Get listed in paid search engines

Most search engines don’t allow you to get listed without paying a fee. Building links to other pages within your web site is a great method to also get listed in the paid search engines because they simply follow a link from another site linked to yours.

8. Index dynamic web pages

It’s not easy for search engines to index dynamic pages. Web pages that get indexed usually end with .htm .html .shtml .php .pdf Dynamic pages usually end with a question mark or contain a lot of numbers. Using proper link building strategies will allow dynamic pages to be indexed and also gain high rankings.

9. Stay ahead of your competition

Targeting specific keywords and/or keyword phrases during your link building campaign, will keep you ahead of your competition. Therefore it’s imperative to be persistent in getting a high number of quality links pointing to your web site.

10. Boost web traffic, visitors and sales

High traffic sites that point to your site help to increase the number of visitors coming to your own web site. It can be compared to having your shop in a mall. Visitors roaming the mall will also visit your shop because it is located in a high traffic area.

Some visitors from high traffic sites will be redirected to your site, thus increasing your overall traffic and visitors. If your web copy is enticing enough for your visitors, the increased traffic will generate more sales.