Project Google Part 3 - Link Building
Search Engine Optimization
In Project Google Part 1, we looked at choosing keywords, and in Part 2, I showed you how to incorporate keywords into web pages. Now it’s time to start generating traffic to the web site, via link building.
Link Building is the part of web site creation where you get out there on the web and create inbound links to your web site. Like keyword optimization, link building is a strategy that increases your search engine rankings. The more links to your web pages that appear around the internet, the more favorably the search engines rank you in search results.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the visible text that a user clicks when they click a link to your web page. Choosing the right anchor text increases your search engine rankings, and just as important, it tells your readers what they’re going to find at the destination the link points to. For both reasons, anchor text works best when it contains keywords that are relevant to the link’s destination. For example, if you’re linking to a page about Wesley Chapel real estate, your anchor text should include those words, like this...read more about Wesley Chapel real Estate.
How do you create anchor text? Here's the neccessary html code: <a href="http://www.realliving.com/Kathy.MacKenzie/WesleyChapelRealEstate.asp">Wesley Chapel Real Estate</a>
In Part One of Project Google I discussed the importance of choosing targeted keywords, and the same principles apply here for link building. We wouldn’t use “Tampa real estate” as anchor text for the same reasons we didn’t want to target those keywords in Part One—they’re just too general, and there’s too much competition for those keywords.
Note that it’s not enough to include the keywords in whatever text you write for the link. The keywords should be the link to get the best results.
Where to Place those Links?
Not all links are created equal. Adding inbound links to your site on every web page and web site you can find might seem like a good idea, but it’s almost always a waste of time and effort to add your links to irrelevant web pages. Don’t forget that all of these strategies focus on optimizing traffic to your site—that means you’re targeting specific types of users, and therefore you should be targeting specific types of web sites with your links.
Even when you limit your choices to relevant sites, you’ve still got to choose where to concentrate your efforts. Try to focus on the sites that are popular with the types of users you’re looking for, and equally so, sites that rank well with search engines.
Link quality is important, but so is diversity. You don’t want all of your links coming from the same one or two web sites—it’s important to generate traffic from a variety of different places (again, for both search engine rankings and to optimize traffic from your target user base). With that in mind, here are some of the ways I place links for building site traffic.
- Off-site blogs like those at ActiveRain and Real Estate Webmasters
- Blog comments and blog guest author
- Article submission to sites such as Ezine. These allow you to publish your own articles that include a link back to your web site. There are lots of these sites around, and submission is generally free.
Finally, a word about directories. These have been a good method of generating back links in the past, but directories are rapidly losing in the popularity stakes because Google in particular is discouraging the use of paid links (and most good directories charge a fee for listing a site).
Link Baiting
Link bait is information that you place on your own web site that is particularly interesting or useful, and prompts other web site owners to provide a link to that information on their own sites. This is yet another reason why it’s important to include good quality, useful content on any web site you create.
Link baiting is a good way of building links naturally, and that’s why it’s particularly powerful. The trick is creating content that other people find interesting or useful enough to link on their own web sites. Generally this means including a hook, such as news, resources and information, viewpoints or humor. For example—
- Write about a current news topic in your niche, and maybe take a contrarian viewpoint on the issue to stir up some interest.
- Choose a subject in or relevant to your niche and then find some of the best articles about that subject. Write a blog post or article including links to all the articles and add a short description of each, including what you liked or didn’t like about them.
- Humorous lists are always popular—people never seem to tire of reading lists such as “you know you’re a <insert subject> when…” or “ten things you should never say to…”
Stay Tuned for Part 4 and I'll show you specifically what I've done in the past week to build links to Kathy's website.
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