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LINK BUILDING SEARCH ENGINE STRATEGIES

Motivate Other Websites To Link To Your Website!

Linking from one website to another is the basic principle of the Web. It's also significant off-the-page factor in search engine ranking algorithm. The basic idea is that if your website motivate other website to link to yours, then your site must have quality and relevancy. Still, many websites lack the type of content that motivate other sites to link to them.

Sites that offer inadequate or insufficient content, as well as websites with superior content but with link unfriendly architecture (databases, extensive Java scripts, Flash, image maps, etc.) are less likely to receive a link. On the other hand, websites with easily located relevant content, and no link adverse architectural issues would be considered link-worthy and get many links. To make your website link-worthy, the relevant and useful content on a specific subject is essential!

If you already have a content rich site, there are some ethical SEO strategies you could use to improve link popularity for your site, such as: submitting to major directories, offer a high quality newsletter or article, post articles in e-zines, participate in award programs, offer something free, exchange links with with websites on topic but not direct competition, etc.

TOP DIRECTORIES

To improve link popularity in search engines your website needs to get listed in the top directories, such as Open Directory Project (free), Yahoo! Express (paid), as well as Zeal, JoeAnt, Gimpsy, GoGuides, etc. Major directories provide content feeds to major search engines, plus a link to your website from an important information center.

Other directories to consider might be About.com and Business.com, as well as regional and thematic directories, business directories, yellow pages, white pages, etc. But, beware of marginal directories that appear and disappear very quickly and offer no real value - they won't bring you neither quality links nor targeted traffic. Unless a directory is well known and widely used in your line of work don't waste your time on them.

TOPICAL ARTICLES

Writing expert articles on your topic is another way to increase your link popularity. You should post them on your site, submit them to appropriate publications across the Web, and allow other sites to include the articles for free if they add a link to your site at the end.

That way you improve the quality of your website content further, increase the number of expertly optimized pages, and enhance the probability that other sites, especially with related topics, would link back to you. If you also submit your articles to the sites that accept guest articles, you'll receive a link back to your website from the site you submitted the article to.

RECIPROCAL LINKS

Review the websites that show on search results for the top key phrases you target, select those that are relevant but noncompetitive, and ask them to exchange links with your site. Use exclusively personalized e-mails - never an automated e-mail asking for a link.

Avoid websites with reciprocal link page too deep in the site, as both visitors and spiders might have difficulty finding it. Also note that a link from a huge link page on high ranking website has less value than link from a lower (but high enough) ranking site, with much shorter if any link list.

Your website should promote linkability. Providing useful outgoing links to industry specific websites, news, etc. on your site can be important, too.

IMPROVE CLICKTHROUGH POPULARITY

To improve the click popularity of your website you need to ensure more visitors to click on your web site in the search engine results. As the title element, and often the description tag as well, appear in the search engine results, fine-tuning them could bring more visitors to your site.

To increase the time that visitors spend on your website, quality content and valuable information related to the search query are the most important. Your site should also load quickly in a browser to avoid the possibility that the user might get impatient.

LINK BUILDING DON'Ts

Don't use any methods that the search engines consider spam. Avoid websites that could be considered"bad neighborhoods" by the search engines, and especially Google:

• don't submit to Free for All (FFA) sites
• don't generate guestbook links, which are no different than FFA links
• don't participate in link popularity farms of any kind
• don't exchange links with the low quality websites
• don't exchange links with completely off-topic sites
• don't place a link on your own site just to trade links, etc.

A link from a FFA website or from a guestbook is not a relevant link to any topic, and nobody clicks on those links anyway. Not to mention that a FFA link doesn't remain there long enough to be indexed by search engines. Even if they were indexed and had some value, you would have to share it with hundreds or thousands webpages, which would be worthless.

If you link your website to websites without any quality, your website loses quality, minimizing its chances to receive any valuable link from a quality on topic website. Major search engines give no credit or rankings impact for the above mentioned links, and might even give your website a penalty.

Craig Silverstein, Google's Director of Technology, said on Search Engine Strategies New York (Advanced Link Building session, March 2004):

• a page's importance equals the aggregate importance of pages linking into it
• use descriptive anchor text
• get similar sites to link back to your site
• attract links with relevant content
• don't link into bad neighborhoods.

Expert website optimization and promotion involves continual research, learning and understanding of both searchers and search engines. But even if you are interested just in your own website marketing, you need the right information. Enhanced Google Algorithm Puzzle >>

User Oriented Design & Ethical Website Marketing Strategies by Distinctia, 2006