April 28th, 2007 - Missing Links: A Strategy for Forging Stronger Links
Here’s the original draft of this article that appeared in BizTech magazine.
Steve Rubel is genuinely surprised to learn that more than 320,000 web pages link to his blog, Micro Persuasion. “300,000, that sounds high. That many?” he says, laughing. “I had no idea!”
We’ve often heard how both the volume and quality of inbound links are a critical metric for a website’s success. They drive traffic, and are factored into search engine algorithms to determine your site’s relevancy in highly competitive search engine rankings. Given that, you’d expect Rubel to watch his link count like a stock ticker. But, as with many of the successful site owners I’ve talked with, the link love is really just a byproduct of creating a unique site with interesting, relevant content.
“I’m not thinking about how to get links, I’m thinking about how to engage in a conversation, and for anyone in this medium that should be their goal,” explains Rubel, who has nicely integrated his enthusiasm for blogging with his role as the Senior Vice President of global PR firm Edelman. “I have a tremendous passion for the Internet, and the democratization of the Internet, and the changes that are happening in marketing and public relations and media. The links are just an extension of how I operate.”
Still, for sites looking to expand the reach of their website, it definitely pays to understand the basics of a link building strategy. This knowledge is useful for evaluating link-swap opportunities, allocating resources and energy to link building, and creating links that lead to tangible improvements in your web traffic and conversion rates.
All Links are not Created Equal
There are several dimensions by which the quality of a link can be evaluated. Here are some key criteria:
Links from Authoritative Pages: One way to measure the authority of a page is Google’s PageRank statistic, visible in the Google toolbar. PageRank measures a web page’s popularity based on the amount and quality of links that point to it. In most cases, the highest ranked page in a site will be the homepage, but you can find odd instances where a popular landing page has a higher rank. Viewing PageRank is important because when one web page links to another, a portion of the linking page’s PageRank is added to the page being linked to.
Some links just don’t count. If the Pagerank of the page is “unknown”, that means that the page is not indexed by Google, often because of common indexing inhibitors like the use of Flash or Javascript. Similarly, if the links of that page are coded using a special “nofollow” tag, search engines will not place any value on those links.
Links from Relevant Sites: In the early days of search engines, link quantity was all that mattered. These days, search engines are more picky about determining the link popularity of your site. They have dramatically increased the importance of links from relevant sites. The rationale is simple: if you’re important in your topic area, other sites covering the same topic will link to you. If you’re a bathroom fixtures manufacturer and your site has accumulated several links from real estate sites, you won’t gain much ground in the search engine results pages.
Keyword-rich Anchor Text: If sites link to you using the link text “click here”, it counts for something, but it’s much less valuable to you than if they had linked with the phrase “quality imported mongoose meat,” or whichever keywords are most relevant to your business.
One-way vs. Reciprocal: Reciprocal links (where two sites link to each other) are of less value than one-way links (where one site links to another, and that site does not link back). Don’t let this sway you to become a link-miser. If a reciprocal link is desired or required, don’t hesitate to provide it.
Avoid the generic “Links” page, and instead consider creating a page called “Associates” or “Related Businesses”. Remember to keep it relevant. If a link seems like an odd association to someone visiting your site for the first time, chances are it shouldn’t be there.
Links that drive traffic: This one has the potential to trump all others. If your zero PageRank, “nofollow”-tagged link from an apparently irrelevant site actually drives to you reasonably relevant, high-volume traffic that leads to conversions, who cares about search placement?
March 20th, 2008 at 3:58 am
Creating links is essential especially for an an online shop noone will naturally link to such websites, so thinking about how to get links is really a big issue.