Links from one web site to another can be useful - but they can equally be destructive. Your web site needs links in order to boost traffic, but it needs the right kind of links. Otherwise all your good work on your web site could be to no avail.

There is a powerful reason why your web site needs links. If someone is reading information on another web site and that web site links to you within the main text of the article it is like a personal recommendation. We value personal recommendations, so links within the articles we read have particular worth.

However, for recommendations like these to be of real value they need to be personal. In other words, they need to be highly focused for the individual readers - not just links that "might" be useful, but which actually are of value.

Therefore getting links on any page - such as a web site run by a friend - is of no help to you. This is because there is no value in such a link to the reader. For example, let's assume you have a web site about business consultancy and your friend the florist also has a web site. So, the florist puts a link to your web site on theirs. In theory, sounds great. In practice, not so good at all. Why to people go to florist web sites? To find out about flowers and, perhaps, to buy them. No-one visiting a florist web site has in their mind at that moment the need for business consultancy; hence if there is a link to the consultancy on the florist web site, it has no appeal - it no longer has the same feel as a personal recommendation.

However, imagine your friend's web site is still that florist's web site. And let's pretend for a moment you have written a book about displaying flowers. Aha...! You see, there is now a much more obvious reason for a link.

Now I know this all sounds rather obvious, but far too many people chase links for links sake. Being able to say you have a thousand sites linking to you is impressive - but how many of those links make sense psychologically? If the links don't make any real sense to the visitors to the sites where those links appear, then you may as well not have the links in the first place.

Link Strategy - Step One
The first and most important step in gaining links is to ensure you find the right pages to link to you. What you are looking for are pages that have content that is directly related to what you want linked. So, for our florist example, having a link to your book on flower arranging would be no good on a page that was about pot plants. Equally, if you have several books, linking to the catalogue of them is no good either, because people will have to search for something of relevance - and they won't. So you need to find specific pages within your web site that you want to link to specific pages on other people's web sites. Appearing on a general "links list" has no human value since people rarely go trawling around lists of links - they go to Google instead which has far more links than any other web site.

Hence, you need to find suitable pages that could be linked to specific parts of your web site, or to particular content. One way of doing this is to choose an article or something you wish other people to link to. Then use Google or your favourite search engine to find related content. After that, contact the owners of that web site and point out to them that you have some content of value to their readers. They will then want to link to your content in order to improve what they offer to their marketplace.

You can semi-automate this with programs like Axandra's IBP and Arelis combination. This helps you locate suitable pages where you could gain links to your material. It also lets you email the page owners to offer them the opportunity of linking to your information.

Link Strategy - Step Two
Having found suitable pages which could contain your links it's time to move on to the next stage of ensuring you have good links. This is ensuring that your links are "contextual". Contextual links are ones that make sense to someone reading the text. Links that say something like "click here" or "more" don't help the reader because they don't tell them what the link is about. The link earlier in this paragraph makes it clear to you that the information you will find is about "contextual links" - links that make sense to real readers.

To ensure you get contextual links you need to prepare the HTML code for people who could potentially link to you. By doing this you are controlling the way they link to you so that it makes real sense to people reading the page where the link is going to be based. As a result, it helps boost your traffic more effectively. Here is the basic code you can use. Just swap "yourdomain" for your actual domain and "context words" for the words you want to trigger the link.

<A HREF="http://www.yourdomain.com">context words</A>

This simple line of HTML code is all you need to provide people with. They can then include this in the middle of articles and in places where it makes human sense to use the context words.

If you provide the traditional coding of a title, followed by a link and then a description of your site, it leaves the user of your code only one place to put the link - in a links directory, which is the last place you want it to be.

Link Strategy - Step Three
Although this is the third step, it is in fact the most important as the previous two steps are dependent upon it. You need to keep adding valuable content to your site. Otherwise sites that could link to you will have no reason to. Simply linking to other sites adds no real value to the site where the link is based. However, referring to useful articles and resources does add value. Hence the more content you add to your site, the more links you can generate.

Furthermore, if you publicise your new content using blogs or RSS feeds, or perhaps press releases as well, you will automatically gain publicity for your new content, thus attracting other web site owners towards it. Creating a piece of link code at the end of the article will allow other people to quickly link to your article once they have read it. You'll see at the bottom of this article a "permalink" to it which can be copied and pasted into any web page. I've also added a "context" link at the bottom as well, to show you what can be done. However, neither of these additional links to this web site would be possible without extra content.

Link Strategy - Conclusion
What you need is plenty of fresh new content that makes it appealing for people to connect to your site and recommend your articles and content to their own readers. You can make this more likely by providing the relevant code for other web site owners to use. Plus you can find relevant web pages that would benefit from the addition of your content to spread the word. Publicising your added content also helps attract potential link partners.

Seeking links in this way means that a site may provide you with several different links to your web pages, rather than a single link in a "links page". This adds significant benefits because it means you get much more exposure. Plus there is a further boost - via Google.

If Google sees plenty of links to your web site, it rates it as more valuable to readers than a site that has few links. Equally, if those links are in context, on a page that is relevant to the linked material, then they also get bonus points. Indeed, being in a simple links directory on a web site can do you more harm than good because your link could easily be associated with negative words or competition.

Adopting a strategy where you are seeking links to specific items of content in your web site is by far the best way to go. It adds more links to you, they are in human context, which coincidentally works best for Google as well, so it all adds to a search engine benefit.

Here is the code you can use yourself to link to this article:

<A HREF="http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/indepth/2007/10/ how-to-get-even-more-links-for-your-web.htm">links strategy</A>

Labels: marketing, SEO

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At October 15, 2007  Ian said…

At October 15, 2007  Graham Jones said…

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Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It's hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers' understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By "quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile companies." However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank lower on the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let's look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between "Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work - and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business' rewards.

Labels: SEO

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