Linking Strategies: Do's And Don'ts
John Krycek | Contributing
Writer | 2005-08-26
In the first part
of this article we learned some techniques to build a solid potential
link partner list for your website. Those sites aren't any good
to you if you don't use a strategy for writing the textual content
of those links. Yes. I mean those few little words that are underlined
in blue. In the right order they give the key to your website
door to the world. In the wrong order, they don't budge the cylinders
in the lock.
Number of links takes
second place to quality of links. The words you choose, varying
them for each targeted link site, and incorporating some tried
and true direct mail standard tactics will make your links more
popular in the search engines, which is our ultimate goal. So
lets get started!
As we said earlier,
links are a crucial part of attaining high search rankings. The
key to writing good "link content" uses the same tactics
for writing all good web content. Namely, don't write for the
search engines. Write for your readers and target audience. After
you do that, then go back and tweak the little details to optimize
for the engines. Why? The search companies attempt to give results
for human readers, and because a number one search engine position
is worthless if the description of your site is the most boring
thing anyone has ever read.
You have humans that
are examining your site to see if they want to link to you. Even
if you pay for links someone has to make the decision that you're
worthy of being on their site. And further, you'll never sell
your product or service or attain any readership. Let's take a
simple step-by-step approach and make sure your links are lively,
catchy, searchable and gushing to be clicked.
Pretend you're the
owner of a pumpkin company website. You sell all things made from
pumpkins.
Step 1- Review
Your Keyword List
Those are the words
and phrases that you want to rank highly with in the search engines.
They are the starting point for your link text. Note: "link
text" is the clickable part of the link, the underlined blue
type. Let's take some keywords and apply a few tactics to them
to develop a good link.
A few keywords might
be:
pumpkin retailer
pumpkin festival
pumpkin plant
pumpkin holiday
pumpkin festival
Step 2- Create
variations on those keywords
Think of phrases
that someone might enter into a search engine. Using that thought
as the core, build outward by elaborating and specifying. Ask
yourself "what type of ____?" to help you expand. For
example, take the few keywords above and make them a bit more
specific to:
pumpkin pie recipe
pumpkin bread recipe
cooking pumpkin seed
pumpkin patch
how to grow pumpkin
planting pumpkin
seed
pumpkin carving design
carve Halloween pumpkin
pumpkin carving pattern
pumpkin costume
pumpkin centerpiece
Note: When coming
up with additional keyword phrases (for use within your page elements
and link) try this tool. The Keyword Selector Tool is part of
Overture sponsored listings (now Yahoo) that will tell you how
many times a phrase was searched in their engines on the web.
Target the phrases with the most hits.
Step 3 Word Varieties
Your link should
contain enough words so that when read out of context it still
makes sense. Not so many words that it becomes blurred when a
reader scans through a page.
Take the list you
just made vary your keyword links using all of those keywords.
Search engines raise an eyebrow at seeing "pumpkin recipe"
on 50 sites with the exact same phrase all pointing back to you.
It doesn't see natural. Mixing up your link text with "pumpkin
pie recipie","pumpkin bread recipe", and "cooking
pumpkin seeds" and the rest of your list keeps you well diversified
without danger of spamming. And your keywords are more focused
and targeted which gives you a better chance of being ranked higher.
Step 4 Incorporating
Direct Mail Tactics
Now we have the words
that will make up our link text. We're almost finished. We need
to give people some motivation to click.
The simplest of direct
mail programs or incentive marketing campaigns all have a solid
"call to action." We need one here too. Why should a
reader go to your site? What's in it for them? They've got better
things to do.
So many websites
use the phrases "Click here," "Learn more,"
or "More info". There's a definite boundary between
keeping things simple and clean on a web page and just copping
out. When I see those phrases on a link I think the writer didn't
have time to get me excited about their product so I don't have
time to go look.
It doesn't take much
to write a simple call to action. For example:
Instead of "pumpkin
pie recipe," say "Grandma's pumpkin pie recipe and all
things pumpkin at The Orange Pumpkin." Now your reader knows
the name of your business (which will also be indexed), and thinks
if it's made by Grandma it's probably good… I think I'll
have a look.
Step 5 Put it
all together
Take your keyword
phrase and surrounding text and create your link. The coded form
looks like this.
Grandma's pumpkin
pie recipe and all things pumpkin at The Orange Pumpkin.
Every single link
doesn't have to be different, but you should have quite a variety
if you follow these steps for all your keywords.
Don't forget to use
those keywords within your page too
Step 6 Final Thoughts
Stay away from link
farms and free for all link sites.
List in as many Directories
as you can, especially ones that are of the same nature as your
site.
Try to get one-way
links. You might be able to buy some from someone fairly cheaply.
If you have to get a reciprocal link, stick to sites that are
similar in theme to yours. They don't have to be identical, but
in the case of The Orange Pumpkin Company, a link from a car dealer
is a waste of time…unless that car dealer happens to have
a collection of the world's greatest pumpkin recipes on their
site. If that's the case, then try to get a link on the page with
the recipes.
Even though you're
goal is to rank high in the searches, write for the end user.
Then go back and fine-tune things for an optimized search engine
friendly page.
Good luck and happy
linking!
