| Success in life comes through building
and sustaining both personal and professional relationships.
As human beings, we strive to be at the right place at
the right time in order to make the right connection. We
quickly learn that each right connection links to another
and before we know it, we are part of a network.
Do you wonder why your site does not receive the traffic
you believe it deserves? The only people visiting your
website are current customers. Where are the new customers
the web designer promised you? One of the most overlooked
steps in creation of a website is Search Engine Optimization
(SEO). We like to think that search engines will crawl
our website and shazaam, like magic, we appear at the top
of the results for our keywords. Unfortunately, it rarely
works that way. We need to build relationships or "links" to
our sites. While this can be a daunting endeavour, it can
be very rewarding.
We are going to look at link building theory and practice.
How do you let the world, more accurately the web, know
you are open for business? Where do you begin building
links? What about link building software? What are directories?
Who are your top competitors? Who links to them? How do
you ask for a link? Do you want reciprocal links? How many
links do you need? These are the questions all website
owners and link builders need to answer.
Search engines look at links as votes. The more links
your website has, the more votes it has to be number 1,
or the "authority" on your subject matter. Not all links
are created equal. Links from more popular websites are
weighted heavier then links from less popular sites. Search
engines are now smart enough to know that content is related,
so, links from relevant sites are more important then links
from sites which are irrelevant.
The link text will help you rank better
for your keywords. If possible get into the major directories.
Avoid FFA's or "Free For All" link farms.
How do you let the world know you are open for
business?
PR or public relations. The way most link builders will
approach this is to create a press release that is disseminated
to the right people. How do we know we reach the right
people? In a recent talk with Eric Ward, the father of
link building, I learned that most of the press release
web services allow a person to subscribe to items that
interest them. If a person runs a widget website and is
interested in widgets, they will receive any press release
that is related to widgets. Often, they may list the new
widget information on their own website. That's an easy
link. The press release itself is another link. Yes, it
may cost a bit of money to draft and the service may not
be free, but you have built several links with a simple
press release.
Link Building Software
Link building software automates the task of collecting
relevant sites and their contact information, based on
keywords. Many of the available software packages include
an automatic contact manager that allows you to contact
sites with very little effort. It is generally accepted
that you should not use the automatic contact features.
Instead use the software to identify sites and contact
them manually. Many webmasters feel the automated emails
to be spam and will reject, with prejudice, any site that
asks for a link using them. Software should be used in
addition to other link building strategies.
The directories
The major pay for inclusion directories
include Yahoo and Business.com. These directories charge
to be included in their database of websites. They are
often used by major search engines to help determine rank.
Don't forget the free directories such as the ODP and joeant.com.
The ODP (Open Directory Project) is at http://dmoz.org.
They are selective on the sites they include. Not all websites
will be able to obtain a link at the ODP. joeant.com on
the other hand is very easy to get into. You will have
to join to enter your site into their database, it's very
easy to do, and is a super easy link to obtain.
Who are your top competitors?
It is important to seek out your top competitors, the
websites that are ranking on the first page of search results
for your keywords. Knowing who is at the top, and who links
to them is the first and foremost part of link building.
Who links to them?
Returning to our link building is like life analogy; imagine
you operate a linen laundry. As a linen laundry owner,
you wouldn't want to network with people who are involved
in high technology or manufacturing. You would want to
network with people who are in the hospitality or closely
related industries. Restaurants, hotels or people who interact
with them on a frequent basis. That is if we have a website
that deals with the latest widgets and widget reviews,
we wouldn't want to waste time seeking links from automobile
manufacturers (unless the widgets are automobile related).
We want links from other widget and widget related websites.
The easiest way to determine who is linking to your top
competitors is to use the link: command in your search
engine of choice, the Google link command seems to be broken,
so use a search engine other then Google. For an example
we will use a fictional company Widgetreviews, with the
URL of http://www.widgetreviews.com. Widgetreviews is at
the top of the search engines for your search term "widget
reviews". Because of this, we want to see who links to
Widgetreviews. Just enter "link: www.widgetreviews.com" (without
quotation marks) into your favourite SE, other then Google
of course.
Follow this procedure for the top 5 or 6 sites that use
your keywords. Compile a list competitor websites and their
incoming links. We will use the list as a source for our
link building strategy.
Asking for a link
We now have a list of website pages that link to widgetreviews
and can now see if we can get our site listed on the page
as well. You will need to visit the pages listed. It is
important that when you write an email to a webmaster that
it is obvious you have visited the site yourself and that
it is not a machine generated email (spam). You will need
to determine the email address of the person you need to
send your request to, be sure to state why you deserve
to be listed on their page, as well as a few compliments
about their website, and your contact information. Be courteous
and succinct most webmasters have little time to deal with
their daily tasks. Most important, ask for link text that
uses your keywords, not your company name. Using our widget
example, you would ask for a link with the text "widget
reviews", or in HTML Widget Reviews.
Reciprocal links
Generally, reciprocal links are not weighted as heavily
as non reciprocal links. I usually only offer reciprocal
link if I really want a link from high traffic site that
demands a reciprocal link.
How many links do you need?
Your work at link building will never end. The good news
is that as your site becomes an authority on your subject
matter, websites will link to you on their own.
Your options
You have three options when it comes to link building.
Hire someone; don't worry about it or Do It Yourself.
The first option is a good option, but, it can be very
expensive. Professional link builders often charge $20
a link + the cost of the link (yes, websites sell links).
As you can see, this can add up quickly. Building a hundred
links through a professional link builder could easily
cost $2,000!
The don't worry about it option doesn't cost a thing.
But, don't expect any traffic. The World Wide Web is a
collection of links. Each site pointing to other sites.
Without links, your otherwise brilliant and insightful
website will slowly die a horrible lonely death.
This article is written with the DYI'er in mind. I wish
you good luck in your link building adventures!
Author Info:
Copyright 2005. Brett Hart has founded
several internet publications including SEONation.com -
SEO tutorials, articles and reviews. http://www.seonation.com
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