Link Building Explained
Link popularity can make so much difference with the search engines.
Put simply: link popularity is the number and quality of incoming links pointing to your site. The sites linking to you consider your site important enough to link to, the search engines take this into consideration when ranking you & your sites ranking will increase with the more quality links you establish.
The most beneficial incoming links are those from authoritative sites, (such as Yahoo or the BBC) or from sites that share the same focus as yours. From authoritative sites, you also gain massive visibility.
When asking for a link:
- Have a link on your own site before you ask for a link in return and specify the location of the link.
- Provide the link text in HTML that you would like used when people link to you, make it easily obtainable & use keywords, you can also provide buttons & banners for additional visibility.
- Make sure the site you want the link from actually has a links/webmasters page.
Target the right sites:
- Make sure the site your requesting a link from has links from other sites like yours.
- Search for sites that rank highly for keywords which are important & beneficial to you, target the sites not in direct competition with you.
- If sites already link to you, request they link to a specifically relevant page of your site.
- Make sure you review all website's you request links from. Never automate the link request process.
- Ensure link quality: Link quality refers to the rank of the site that links to you. Link quality will boost your sites rankings if the link comes from a legitimate source, Yahoo, Dmoz, Google etc. You can be penalized however if the link comes from a link farm or a bad source. So check who's linking to you!
Linking Strategy:
Build a content rich site that has unique content. Content is always the key! Make sure you write with correct keyword density, keep your intentions clear & honourable, never try to cheat the search engines, you will come unstuck.
Contact selected sites that share the same focus as your site (not competitors however, try educational establishments? Publications? News sites?), request a reciprocal link from their site. Eventually when your site develops to a certain point, with excellent content & beautiful design people will link to you on their own. (Reciprocal links can help get you started though.) Get your site listed as accurately as possible in the many search engines & directory sites. Accuracy of the listing is essential here.
You can employ microsites to focus on a specific area of content, then use the microsites to promote purely that selected content. Make sure you interlink both the microsite & your main site as accurately as possible.
Blog sites can be incredibly beneficial. Providing a blog spot on your site gives you an area that you can update frequently, easily & that users can syndicate (get automatic updates via RSS). Many blogs also feature "talk back" allowing users to leave their own comments & views. Blogs assist with search engines as they have an active relationship with users rather than a passive one. Blogs provide faster access to data, users get the data almost as fast as you create it & the audience is pretty much guaranteed to be informed & interested as they subscribed to your blog.
Don't forget that your homepage isn't the only page of your site. It will often help if you select people to link to the most relevant page of your site related to their content. You can even (if you send eNewsletters) submit eNewsletters to specific directories & search engines.
Offer an incentive to anyone whom links to you. We offer a percentage on any projects recommended & guaranteed from a 3rd party as an incentive to link to us.
For more information on Firecurl's solutions contact us.
