The single most important factor
in positioning
In recent years, more and more search engines have started to heavily
rely on a link popularity measurement in order to determine ranking
for your site. This is actually a good way for them to get more
accurate ranking, while minimizing the irrelevant pages that are
optimized for irrelevant keywords. In other words, it makes your
job much harder, because just optimizing your site isn't enough.
In this way they don't just look at the content on each page. Most
also analyze link structures and clicks to determine the best results
to show in a search.
In a nutshell, link popularity is measured by the number of links
between websites. So, if you have many outbound links on your site,
and there are many links TO your site, your value increases.
Example:
- Site A is linked to by 1,000 other web
pages that are indexed in a certain search engine.
- Site B is only linked to by 50 other
web pages that are index by the same engine.
Site A will likely have a much better link popularity rating, and
even if Site B has a better-optimized site, it is likely that Site
A will have better ranking.
All Links were not created equal
There is an added catch to the link popularity issue. Not only
are the quantity of links considered, but also the quality
of links. If a site that links to you is considered by the engine
to be important, it will carry much more weight than some random
site. Furthermore, most search engines assign themes to
websites they index no, and if you have a higher inbound link count
from websites of the same theme, you will be better off than having
links from unrelated sites.
For these reasons, you should attempt to trade links with sites
that are similar to yours in some way, and really try with very
popular sites.
See it for yourself
Google uses a system called Page Rank, which is actually Link Popularity.
If you go to Google and download the Google Toolbar, you will be
able to see Google's Page Rank calculation on a scale of one to
ten for every page you visit. Do some searches, and you will see
that pages with a higher Page Rank tend to get much better positioning
than pages with a lower rank. While Google does not tell you exactly
how they rank pages, they do admit that it a based heavily on how
many sites link to you, and that 'quality' sites linking to you
are given more weight in the calculation.
Where to start
So you have a new website, and don't want to wait years to build
link popularity, right? Well, time is certainly the cure, as sites
naturally grow more popular over time. But, to get you a head start,
try the following:
1. Submit to Yahoo and DMOZ
Submit your site to Yahoo and DMOZ as soon as possible. These are
popular directories and will help your link popularity. Submit to
other directories, of course.
2. Trade links with other webmasters
Find other people that are willing to exchange links with you. Not
only will you benefit in link popularity, but you are more likely
to get more traffic from them, as well. If possible, trade with
larger companies, and companies in a similar business.... even your
competition if you dare. Do searches with keywords that you want
to target, as well as similar, complimentary keywords. E-Mail the
webmasters of the sites that have high ranking and offer to trade
links with them. These sites are more likely to be considered higher
quality for your popularity.
3. Find trade-related websites
Trade with sites that have directories of businesses in
your industry, and make sure they add your link.
4. Encourage your customers to put a link to you on their
website.
Never underestimate your customers. They are some of the
most likely people around to link to you. Ask.
Outbound links and internal links
Add to the link puzzle links you have going beyond your website.
This helps. Also consider that the more internal links (between
pages on your own site) you have, the easier it will be for a spider
to crawl your web.
Behind a myth
FFA Sites. The reality is that FFA sites did once serve a good purpose,
but this is really no longer the case. The links on such sites are
unlikely to help you, and they really are not worth the spam you
receive as a result. So, you may ask, why do we support hundreds
of thousands of FFA sites in AddWeb? The huge link directory
list in AddWeb is a legacy feature from the days that it did, in
fact, help. We actually removed them from a version of AddWeb, and
got an enormous flood of customer complaints as a result, demanding
that we return them to the program. We did return them, as we many
customers elected not to listen to our advice, and after all, they
are the customer. However, we added in tons of warnings for people
that select such engines. We suggest that you avoid selecting the
FFA sites in AdDWeb, and only submit to real engines (including
the smaller ones).
Do it in AddWeb...
Yahoo and DMOZ
AddWeb can perform free submissions to DMOZ, though it's custom
category browsing feature. Do it right away, as it takes forever
to get listed. As for Yahoo, AddWeb can submit to Yahoo in the same
way it does DMOZ, but Yahoo only accepts free submissions for non-business
sites. To get your business site listed with Yahoo, you must pay
them a fee. You can access the paid submissions for Yahoo through
AddWeb's Pay Engines section. It is highly advised that
you do so.
Link Trader
This is possibly the most important feature of AddWeb.
The newer versions of AddWeb have an exciting feature called LinkTrader.
It is a managed network of thousands of other webmasters using AddWeb,
that want to trade links with you. It is a free service for all
registered AddWeb customers, which lets you browse through thousands
of websites with whom you can request trades. When two potential
trading partners accept a trade, AddWeb builds a link page for you
to place in your site. From time to time, you can use AddWeb to
verify that your trading partners are, in fact linking to you. Remember,
if their page is indexed on a search engine, and your link is on
it, it can boost your link popularity.
Link Trader also helps you get indexed. If a link page has your
link on it, and it gets spidered, chances are that the spider will
naturally find your site and list it!
Keep all of the above in mind when selecting trading partners in
LinkTrader. Look at their websites before you trade with them, and
try to trade with sites that are relevant.
|