ReeHart - Blogging from the Heart

Posts Tagged ‘one way links’

Implementing a positive strategy for marketing that maintains a consistant flow of web traffic to your site is by no means impossible. To get this web traffic to your site you need a significant search engine presence, and to achieve this, you need to main things, a quality website that is easy for Google to read and a series of links linking to your site from authority sites all over the web.

This is not as difficult as it sounds as there are many systems in place to make this happen for you. First though, you need to understand that not all links are equal. Google uses a Page Rank system to value each page of each site that it knows about. Ranked from 0 ” 10 with 10 being the best, most popular and valuable sites, and 0 being sites it knows about but thinks very little of. Below 0 is a grey bar graphic in the Google toolbar which indicates that either Google doesnt know that the site exists or worse than that, that the site has been blacklisted by Google and should be avoided.

In an ideal world we would all get links from the home pages of PR 10 websites. The problem with that strategy is that there are only about 10 PR 10 sites world wide, and unsurprisingly they are mostly unwilling to give links to anyone bold enough to ask. This means that we have to find our links from lower PR sites. Even finding PR 7 and 8 sites that will give us links is difficult, they themselves are very popular authority websites and as such they as choosy as to who they link to and who they dont.

The goal is to get lots of websites with some PR or the potential to get some PR reasonably soon to link to you. So what that means is, identifying a site as new (hasn’t been online long) and has no PR, but that is building links in order to get some PR. Identifying these type of sites is a good long-term method to adopt as you never know what sites are going to be the next PR-8s, 9s or even 10s in a few years time. The PR you will be given when Google review it (around every 6 months) will be based on the amount and the quality of the link juice you squeeze out of all the sites that link to you. The higher PR sites you get links from, the higher your PR will be.

So how does one go about getting these links together? Well, that is just the question. You can hunt down sites online that seem to link to other sites. There are quite a few sites about that provide reciprocal linking. The flaw with these is that reciprocal links aren’t really worth a great deal any more (although they are woth something as sometimes two-way links are natural eg.customer & supplier etc.they’re just not worth much). This is because the major search engines have cottoned on to the arrangement being made between sites with this type of link, they have therefore begun to downgrade their worth.

Easily the quickest and most effective way to reach the top of search engine result is by getting one way links, ie, getting sites to put a link to your site on theirs without linking back. This can however be quite hard because people tend to want something in return.

You may have problems achieving these one way links if you only have one website. There are a few answers to this issue, but one way link management is the clear way to go.

Effectively, your site is entered into a triangular arrangment where your site (site A) links to site B, which then links to site C, which then links back to site A (your site) this is beneficial to each site to the value of one one-way link. The big search engines cannot trace these links and so they reward you with a big push up the results rankings.

Do you remember the days of the flashing, spinning, and downright annoying banner ads that just seemed to take over any website? Fortunately these have gone by the wayside (for the most part) and webmasters are a lot more conscious of the kinds of ads they are permitting to be displayed on their sites. This of course has led to an increase in text link ads and while some may question the effectiveness of this form of marketing, there are others who simply swear by it.

Advertising your home business with text links may be quite profitable since it gives you a certain freedom to target your ad campaigns. For example, did you know that you might choose to have a text link ad that simply sends visitors from another website to yours where they might explore what your home business has to offer? On the other hand, there are those text links that will send the visitor straight to a particular good or service and all she or he needs to do is add it to the cart and check out. This is highly targeted advertising and is sometimes the key component to having high sales to click through ratios.

Savvy home business owners have found that text link ads are the most effective when they are imbedded in articles and newsletters that feature desirable content rather than being relegated to the sidelines of another website. This has paved the road for the new genre of article advertisement which is little more than a well written piece of ad copy that contains a healthy keyword density and offers bona fide useful information all the while serving as the delivery vehicle for the text link ads.

Even as this is a favorite way of having impact with text ads, there are the cousins of this practice that are somewhat questionable. Consider for example the amateur websites that seem to be little more than a collection of text links vying for display space. Sometimes mistakenly naming themselves portals, they are often the brainchild of savvy affiliate marketers who are seeking out one or more companies with which to affiliate themselves and then simply place a collection of text links to certain products and services onto their sites.

As a home business owner it is vital that you control as much as possible how your text links will be placed and also where they will appear. If you do not want your business name associated with a certain type of business or webmaster, it is vital that you carefully screen those who apply to affiliate themselves with you. In the same vein, if you are starting out small time, stay away from pay per click ads and instead require pay per sale ads until a certain amount of sales have been achieved by an affiliate which showcases their ability to drive targeted traffic to your site.

Sure, this will take a bit longer than just allowing for a free for all, but the results justify the extra time and effort spent!

What is offpage optimization?

Well, they are techniques you can use to help improve your Search Engine rankings but is done off your site. Which means it is done on other sites and not your own. Onpage requires you to do optimization on your own webpages, offpage requires you to do it off-site.

Ok, what does it all mean?

With Google, offpage optimization has became more important as they place a lot of emphasis and relevance on links. The simple lowdown for offpage optimization is LINKS. LINKS from other websites to yours or BACKLINKs or INBOUND LINKs. Links with anchor text(keywords) from other websites to yours. And seriously, that’s about it - getting others to link to you with the proper anchor text. LINKs are also important because they provide a way for the search engines bots to find your site.

The more links you have pointing to your site, the more important the search engines rate your site. Anchor text provides a way to rate the keywords for your site. And more links with anchor text to your site, the more important the Search Engine rate your site for those keywords. It’s as simple as that.

If you properly plan your offpage optimization and what a bit of luck, you can rank better in the Search Engines.

Firstly, you have to pay attention to :

1. How many sites are linking to you. More the merrier.

2. What kind of sites are they and whether their topics are related to yours (titles, keywords and so on).

3. The Anchor text used.

4. Trustrank and Pagerank of the sites linking to you (whether they are trusted by Search Engines or have been blacklisted)

Anchor text is the hyperlink text. It is usually used to tell the reader the subject matter of the page that it links to. Like a link here - SEO Articles, you can see that the anchor text here is “SEO Articles”, pointing to http://www.seochat.com and this is like telling the reader that the subject is SEO Articles and this site “http://www.seochat.com” has information related to it. So if someone searched for the words “SEO Articles”, this is helping the site http://www.seochat.com to rank for that term. So use this anchor text to your advantage by using keywords in them. Although it is not always possible to use keywords you want, you should not use “click here” as your anchor text.

Remember to optimize your internal pages as well. DO not try to link your main page with all your keywords. For example, if you have a site selling orchids(the flower) and one of your internal page is about flower delivery, is it better for you to optimize your main page for “flower delivery”? No, optimize your main page for the keyword “flower orchids” and your internal page for the words “flower delivery” or “orchid delivery”. This way, at least your site will rank for more terms and get better results for different searches. And not to mention, your onpage optimization would be more effective and easier without too many keywords on one page.

How do I go about doing it?

You should start off with a link building campaign. I will divide them into two major parts.

The first step is where you get links by direct posting.

1. Link exchanges - Link with other websites, preferably with related sites. They are two-way (they link to you and you link back) links. You can email webmasters and request a link exchange with the proper anchor text. Link exchanges can be very effective if done with sites of the same topics or subjects. But beware of who YOU link to. Linking to “bad” sites can get you into trouble with Search Engines and even get you delisted or banned.

2. Article submission - Submit articles you have written to article directories. Usually they have an author’s bio, where you can place your site’s URL in it with the appropriate anchor text. And not only that, writing articles can help improve your reputation in your field of interest as well. You know, your readers may think that you are an “expert” or something.

3. Directory Submission - Submit your site to various directories. There are free and paid directories. It would be advisable to submit your directories to free directories(especially DMOZ) and choose which paid directories you would like to submit to. It’s hard to say which paid directory is best, so use your common sense if you want to do paid inclusion. Please avoid link farms (directories with tons and tons of links in their categories and subcategories) because they don’t work to your advanatage and a lot of them have already been blacklisted or devalued by Search Engines.

4. Forum posting - Signatures allow you to place links and anchor text to your site. If you are posting in a forum related to your site( and with a lot of keywords), you can get better results in your rankings from these postings. However, do note that there are some forums which have the nofollow tag which tells Search Engines not to follow the link. This makes the link useless in SERPs.

5. Blogging - Nowadays everyone likes to leave comments in blogs. You can do it as well. And add your link with the comment. However remember not to spam blog sites, if you add a comment make sure that comment has something to do with the topic. It is also wise to post in blogs which you have some knowledge about.

6. Purchase links - Pay other webmasters to link to you. This method is a bit like a paid directory, just that the site isn’t a directory but could be a informative site or even a blog. You get a link or links with a proper anchor text. There have been reports that some Search Engine devalues such a technique, but it is difficult for Search Engines to know whether that link is a legitimate link or a purchased link. I would also recommend you to buy links directly from other websites than through a “links broker”. You can do this by directly contacting the webmaster and negotiating a price and where your link will be placed. The placement of your link is important as you don’t want your link to be in very page of the site. For your link to have maximum exposure, it would be best to be in the first page(or the main page) and to reduce the spammy effect, confine to 2 to 3 pages at the most. Avoid site-wide links if your own site has very few pages!

The next step would be link baiting and this step is very highly recommended because these links are natural. However all these link baiting are very much related to onpage optimization(what you do on your site).

1. Although this is considered onpage optimization but it would be appropriate to mention this again - content. The biggest and most effective offpage technique is related to your onpage optimizaton. Good, useful and keyword rich content. This way, you are “baiting” other webmasters to link to you. Some of them even provide you with a good anchor text as well. These are what is termed as “natural links” because others linked to you without you directly asking for a link and is very much encouraged by Search Engines.

2. Software/script - Writing a script or software which a lot of people use is a good way to generate links. If you look around forums or blogs or just normal sites, you can see people recommending this and that software or script. Some scripts like forum scripts have a small link back to their site with the appropriate anchor text included, just imagine, if a lot of users use those scripts, the amount of backlinks will be enormous! Do a Google search “link:www.phpbb.com” and see the amount of backlinks! Phpbb.com is the official site for the free Phpbb forum script. And if you provide the software or the script at no charge, the number of grateful users with the link back will surely help your site. Simply put, it generates links for you.

3. Tutorials/How-to articles - Very related to content. Write useful tutorials like those photoshop tutorials or howtos and this will encourage other web designers or webmasters to link to that. Having useful and unique content is one of the best way to get natural links and traffic. If it is useful to a webmaster’s visitors, he will surely want to tell his visitors about it.

4. Service/Knowledge Sharing - Yes, even if you don’t write good content or tutorials or articles, you can provide a valuable service to others. Like script installation, colour matching service for web designers, technical support for Operating Systems and so on. Something like sharing your knowledge or helping others with their problems can very well get you the links because it is useful to webmasters and useful for their visitors as well. You can see some of the most popular sites are actually sites which help others like those webmasters forum or those technical support groups. You can even be selling some unique product or service to the public and let it generate links for you. Unique, valuable and useful service is just as important as unique, valuable and useful content.

5. Freebies and contests can attract links from other sites as well. Who doesn’t want freebies or who doesn’t want to join a contest to get prizes? Everyone does and because it is such a good promotional tool, you can attract a lot of visitors(and links) from these contests even if it is for a short period.

What all this being said, it is important to note that links from high quality sites are better for rankings than links from low quality sites. A few links from reputable sites is worth more than a lot of links from unknown sites. So if you can, try getting links from these sites instead.

There are a lot of SEO experts who say that offpage optimization is more important than onpage optimization. While that is not completely wrong, it is very difficult (but not impossible) for a good offpage optimization to work without excellent content. And that is ultimately what is on your web pages.