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Building a Link Strategy

Link StrategyLinks, also called "hyperlinks", connect text, image or other information objects to each other. You can have links from the Internet to your website which is called an "incoming" link. And you can place links on your website to related content at another URL address. These are called "outbound" links.

Why should you care about having links to and from your website anyway? Here's a few reasons:

  • Links are traffic builders
  • Many search engines use link popularity as a ranking criteria
  • The more incoming links exist, the more chances you have of being found by other search engines
  • Links have endurance. URL postings in newsgroups and mailings lists eventually aren't found anymore and therefore lose their effectiveness as traffic builders.

How to Get More Incoming Links
The Internet creates the same opportunities for big companies as it does small. You are in competition with every company that is displayed in search engine results for your targeted keywords and phrases. You want to get as many quality links as your top competitors have...plus a few more. So to begin, enter your keywords in a search engine like Google and make a list of all your competitors including their URLs.

Then check which websites are linking to them and write those down. To do this, there are tools you can use:

  • On Google, type link:YourCompetitorsURL in the search box and view your results.
  • On HotBot, enter your competitors URL including the http:// and choose "links to this URL."
  • On AltaVista, enter link:YourCompetitorsURL in the search box and view your results.
  • Try Link Popularity or Link Popularity Check

Copy and paste your results into Notepad, Word or some text processer file and save.

Repeat this process for each competitor's website.

Visit every website on your saved list and review them. If they are appropriate for your website to be linked from, then send a link request email to the site owner or webmaster offering a reciprocal link...a trade of incoming and outbound links. If the site is not appropriate, remove them from your list.

When sending a link request, finding an address to send it to may be difficult. When all else fails, you can use the WHOIS Lookup on Network Solutions website. This will give you the technical and administrative contact email addresses.

Your letter should be generic enough so you can send it to all your potentials, but personalized enough so that it doesn't feel like a form letter. I personally am annoyed by receiving the same letter dozens of times expressing deep interest in a link exchange. So genuine and tell the site owner what makes their website so valuable to your customers and why you think their customers would like your content. Be sure to provide a signature file including your URL.

Follow up and provide links to those websites who agree to your proposal and verify that incoming links have been established to your website and that the links work. You may choose to create a page on your website that provides a choice of ways to link and provide code for each solution. You can have simple text links or banner ads of varying color configurations.

Finally, submit the URL of any website that links to your website to popular search engines. This will ensure you obtain the ever so important link popularity score which is the reason you're working so hard.

Good Link Bad Link

When trading links, it's important to note that not all links are equal in effectiveness. Be sure to provide and receive equal link prominence. And when trading links with websites that receive less traffic than yours, consider asking for a banner ad on their site in exchange for a text link on yours.

NEVER put outbound links on your homepage. Place a links page further down in your file tree. You want your customers to have time to view your content before they leave your website.

Check your outbound links often. Site owners remove pages and destroy the link. When your visitors click on the link they receive an HTTP 404 Error that makes your site look bad and confuses the customer. Consider creating a custom 404 error page to maintain and re-route traffic that would have otherwise resulted in an ugly error page.

A handy tool for checking for dead links can be found at Site Owner.

Online Advertising Explained >>

Helpful Websites
The Benefits of Linking by LinkStrategy.com
Developing a Reciprocal Link Strategy by JPC Web Design Services
Search Engine Optimization & Link Popularity by DSD Web Works
Understanding Link Popularity by Linking101.com

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