A fundamental part of web promotion is the trading of reciprocal links to and from sites in order to increase site traffic. Concentrating on links that will do us the most favours from a search engine perspective ensures that the extra site visitors generated are real sales leads, not merely consumers of bandwidth.
Many sites hold out the prospect of sending us traffic, but this will be to little effect if the users arriving aren’t genuinely interested in what we are selling. In fact, in-bound links such as these can detrimentally impact on a site’s search engine standing. The algorithms used by search engines weigh up not only the volume of in-bound links, but also their relevance.
For example, imagine your site sells beer widgets. The type of in-bound links - that is links from other sites to our beer widget site - we should be cultivating are links from beer packaging companies. This link might take some significant work and time to organise but will count for far more with the search engines than getting a link from a mate’s guitar selling web site. Links, then, should be contextual and relevant.
Being in business we not unreasonably expect to be experts in the field of complementary markets and cross-selling. This is generally true, but we don’t necessarily see the world in the same way as a search engine. A good double-check for blind spots is to quiz search engines on what they see as being related to our site.
To do this, enter the search term, related:yourdomain.co.uk. This will retrieve whatever the search engine thinks is related in some way to your site.
Doing this for my own web site uncovered a spelling error in a text link that pointed from a fishing tackle web site in New Zealand to a “Free Online Multiplayer Strategy Games Site”. The omission of one letter, the L, from onlineworlds.org made it appear that the domain was in some way connected to yours truly. At any rate, as far as Google is concerned.
An email has now winged its way half way round the world politely asking for the typo to be corrected. A response is awaited.
Presumably, this unwittingly caused search engine confusion is having an adverse impact on my search engine rankings. So while the exercise did not turn up any new ideas for reciprocal links, it did spotlight a marketing issue that needed attention.
Another advanced search technique that is helpful with building a picture of your site’s existing in-bound links is searching with link:yourdomain.co.uk. This will display who is and who isn’t linking to your site, and to which pages on your site they are linking. Ideally, the type of in-bound links to aim for are those from web sites that contain information that pertains to your business sector and which have a high page ranking.
Increasing your link popularity and desirability for search engines is an ongoing task. There are no shortcuts, but you can improve your site’s ranking by trying out some of the following suggestions:
· Create, submit and maintain large-scale informational resources on your site and embed relevant links that make it easier to persuade other sites to link to you.
· Build in interactivity to your pages in the form of a forum, chat room or blog.
· Find out if there is an industry-related link exchange programme whereby complementary sites link to each other.
· Think big and go for longevity. A large site with high value information and resources that are well maintained updated and regularly submitted to search engines should establish a site as being authoritative and active. The outcome is greatly enhanced results ranking.
Ultimately, the single most coveted in-bound link of all is when a user subscribes to your RSS newsfeed or displays your feed on another site. Like a chain, the success of a web site depends on its links.
