March 22nd, 2008

HTML Source EditorWord wrapSince your site is an extension of your business, you know you have to treat it like such. You first have to get in front of people and tell them you exist before they can tell your friends about you. The web linking component of Search Engine Optimization is not too different. The more friends you have, the more Google will think of you as the popular people, and from there it can start to grow.

In the early, easily corrupted days of the internet, all you needed was a bunch of sites linking to you, and you were golden. It didn’t matter what they were or the reputation of the sites, it just mattered that they had a link pointing to you. This was quickly exploited, destroyed, and factored out of the search engine algorithms.

Now they look at who links to you and how they link to you. The details are all very hush-hush, but those of us in the SEO game for a decade have it figured out pretty well.

Benefits to having good links pointing to your site:

1 – Search engines will see that you are popular and increase your rank accordingly.

2 – Since there are more sites pointing to you, your site will be crawled by search engine spiders more frequently.

3 – Real readers representing organic traffic will increase. This is listed last because it is the least of the benefits, but still very real.

There are many different types of links and each one has a different value and purpose. Figuring them out is easier than actually getting them to happen, but knowing what they are each worth is more important still.

Relevant Link Swap – If you can find someone with a similar web site, ask him or her to link to you. If you sell real estate in Seattle, ask a real estate web site in New York to link to you. You aren’t competitors, so trading links in this way can be an effective way to direct traffic without hurting either site’s business. You should never pay for this type of link; that falls under the heading of “sponsored links.”

A word of caution, however, if you’re going to ask to trade links: don’t say “I’ll link to you if you link to me.” Instead, post a link to them and say, “I have already linked to you; will you also link to me.” If they say no or ignore you, no big deal, just remove the link.

Make certain too that you’re trading equitable link positions. If they link you on every page, you need to do the same. If they bury you on a links page, you should do the same.

Directory / DMOZ.org Links – Define your business and find the best category within DMOZ.org, and follow the link at the bottom of that page to submit your site for inclusion. DMOZ is a highly regarded directory site and having your link there will automatically include you in Google Directory and many other sites that look for easy content to flesh out their offerings without any work. We have already said that these automatically generated sites perform poorly, but these low-level links will not hurt you and will get your name out in the market.

Don’t worry about hitting every single one, since most of them run on the same database, but if you can find a fair handful, a few hours investment can payoff in the long run.

Sponsored Links – Many sites offer to sell sponsored links. They often appear at the bottom of pages, sometimes at the bottom right. These are the least valuable ad spaces, which is why they are so affordable. Don’t count on seeing big traffic (or any at all), but know that buying them helps search engines find you and realize your relevance.

Since you’re likely going to pay as much as $10 per month for these (assuming your link goes to every page of their site, not some obscure single page, which you should never purchase), you need to make certain this is a high-traffic, high-relevance site.

Contextual Links – If you can find a long-standing web publication to sell you keyword driven links pointing to your site, these are the very best to buy. I worked for a company that would broker deals between leading publications and advertisers where article keywords in news publications like “concert” or “football game” would point to an event ticket reseller.

These help the most because the links pointing to your site are now equated in the minds of the search engines with those terms.

A word of caution, however, if you’re going to ask to trade links: don’t say “I’ll link to you if you link to me.” Instead, post a link to them and say, “I have already linked to you; will you also link to me.” If they say no or ignore you, no big deal, just remove the link.

Make certain too that you’re trading equitable link positions. If they link you on every page, you need to do the same. If they bury you on a links page, you should do the same.

Directory / DMOZ.org Links – Define your business and find the best category within DMOZ.org, and follow the link at the bottom of that page to submit your site for inclusion. DMOZ is a highly regarded directory site and having your link there will automatically include you in Google Directory and many other sites that look for easy content to flesh out their offerings without any work. We have already said that these automatically generated sites perform poorly, but these low-level links will not hurt you and will get your name out in the market.

Don’t worry about hitting every single one, since most of them run on the same database, but if you can find a fair handful, a few hours investment can payoff in the long run.

Sponsored Links – Many sites offer to sell sponsored links. They often appear at the bottom of pages, sometimes at the bottom right. These are the least valuable ad spaces, which is why they are so affordable. Don’t count on seeing big traffic (or any at all), but know that buying them helps search engines find you and realize your relevance.

Since you’re likely going to pay as much as $10 per month for these (assuming your link goes to every page of their site, not some obscure single page, which you should never purchase), you need to make certain this is a high-traffic, high-relevance site.

Contextual Links – If you can find a long-standing web publication to sell you keyword driven links pointing to your site, these are the very best to buy. I worked for a company that would broker deals between leading publications and advertisers where article keywords in news publications like “concert” or “football game” would point to an event ticket reseller.

These help the most because the links pointing to your site are now equated in the minds of the search engines with those terms.

How to implement these links

Ideally, you should do these on your own. Nobody knows relevance to your industry and your company as well as you do. When it comes to purchasing links, however, you may wish to hire an outside agent. You should be able to find a single agent who can broker better deals by volume than you may be able to get. First ask your web designer what they know and if they can help you.

And if you’re reading this and wondering what to do, post your questions below with thoughts and ideas about costs and I’ll do my best to respond with specific answers.

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