Web Site Link Popularity and Link Building Suggestions
Some search engines (Google in particular) use Link Popularity as a significant ranking tool.
Link Popularity rating uses to factors:
- The Number of links to your web site
- The Quality and Relevance of links to your web site (as perceived by the search engine - so links from a "good" site are good, links from a poor completely unrelated website are "bad").
The logic being applied is:
If other good web sites consider your site important enough to link to then it must be important.
However this only works for genuine links from relevant sites:
- The search engines don't want "artificially created" (or useless) links and are likely to penalise your web site if it considers this is the case
- The search engines want links from authoritative sites, or links from sites that share the same focus as your website.
Building Links
Ask complementary to swap links with your web site:
- Ask them to link to your web site while outlining the benefits of doing so and offer to link back to them in exchange
- Or ask permission to link to their web site and you might state that a link back is appreciated but not required
- Ensure you have developed genuine content on your of interest to complementary site
- Put their link in place so they can see it
- Look over their web site and suggest where a link to you might be appropriate
- Give them the exact link text to use, even going so far as to put it in HTML so they can just cut/paste it onto their page. Give them all the information they need to make it easy for them to link to you. If they have a big web site that's divided into sections, give them the exact URL of where your web site would fit in.
Finding complementary sites:
- Use the major search engines. Search for your target keywords. Look at the pages that appear in the top results. These are the best ones according to the search engines
- Check the link popularity of your competitors, and find out who are linking to them. Contact those Web sites, and ask them to link to you
- Search the sites of the people who have linked to you for other possible link partners
- Others: Suppliers, Customers, Friends, Trade Organisations, Groups, Clubs, Directories, Search Engines
Please remember: Abuse by participarting in links farms or large volumes of clearly inappropriate (not relevant) links often results in a penalty rather than a search engine ratings boost.
Become a Content Provider:
Give people a reason to link to you. Web sites are linked to for a reason: usually if they provide the most information or the best resources on a particular topic. If you are not a writer, ask the writers if you can use their stuff. The writer gets a link from you. And you get great content. Some ideas:
- Write press releases
- Write articles for other popular sites
- Write a testimonial for a product or service
- Allow others to use your content if the attribute and link back to you
- Give interviews
- Give awards
Regards
Michael Spencer, Managing Director.
michael@epsilis.co.uk
Epsilis - Website Designers
47 Farthing Drive
Letchworth Garden City
Hertfordshire (Herts)
SG6 2TR
UK
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