This article is about maximising your search engine optimization (SEO) to get favourable listings in search engines by getting a link for you site on another site.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
It is not intended to be the ultimate guide to SEO. It explains what an effective linking strategy looks like.
There are many strategies for driving traffic to your site by means other than getting people to click on a link to your site. Your site might be mentioned in a print advertisement (paid or free), broadcast on radio, television or on YouTube, positively reviewed on social networking sites (‘thumbed up’ on StumbleUpon) or accessed directly when the visitor types in the URL or deliberately searches for your site as a result of hearing or reading about your site.
A Few Good Links Are Worth A Thousand Links (Or More)
Not all inbound links to your site are equal.
What would you say if I said that 1,000 links may only be worth 5?
How would you like to drastically reduce the time you spend seeding your site links randomly across the universe internet?
Following, are some of the best linking strategies. But first, what gives a link to your site ‘value’? The following diagram explains six (6) main elements of valuable links.
Understanding The Traffic Light SEO Diagram
- The more your link satisfies a GREEN box, the higher value your link is.
- ORANGE boxes give you satisfactory link value.
- RED boxes do not give you anything – they’re basically useless.
The Best SEO Linking Strategy
For those of you who like a ‘word picture’, here is a summary of the best way to get ‘very high’ and ‘high’ value links. Your goal is to…
- Get a link for one of your pages (that is for a specific page – not just your home page)
- On a site with ‘DoFollow’ enabled (permits the search engine spiders to index the page after the link and shares the Google juice) that has less than 50 links on the entire page (the number of links on a page includes those in the sidebar, header and footer that leave the site)
- With a keyword of relevance as anchor text for your link or in the headline of the page where your link is
- With relevant content on the same page
Great Linking Strategies
Get a link to http://YourSite.com/specific-page with your keyword or keywords as the anchor text in:
- Credible, content-similar sites, with keywords in the heading of the page
- The sidebar blog-rolls of content-similar blogs (appearing more than just the one page)
- Reputable directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo!
- If you are a guest author (i.e. guest post) and have a choice of links in your ‘bio’, use keywords as your anchor text instead of your website name, your name or irrelevant words such as click here
- Get a link in a news site or online-magazine (‘ezine’) with thousands of visitors
- A widget, badge or banner used by many sites and appearing on more than just the one page in a site
- Promote your site as the landing-site of an affiliate program and use the power of a silent army of traffic-finders
Low-Worth Linking Strategies
- Multiple links from a limited number (the same) sites
- Linking between your sites (regularly)
- Commenting on DoFollow blogs, forums and dime-a-dozen directories
- Link Exchanges on content-similar sites
Useless Strategies
- Comment spam on unrelated sites
- Guest books
- Link exchanges on unrelated content sites and in link farms (schemes that offer thousands of visitors)
My inspiration for this article came from deciphering the flowchart at http://www.nicolasprudhon.com/wp-content/themes/emerald-stretch/img/link-building-quality-flowchart.jpg
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the credit, and by the way, I like the way you summarized things, very clear and easy to understand!
Good Job there!
Nicolas Prudhon’s latest artistic creation..Are You Getting Stuck With The Devalued Links Exchange?
Excellent all-round article though I’d query whether a relevant link on an on-topic page would actaully be useless if that page had no PR ?
No PR today – but the possible future? An off-topic page will only confuse the search engines, especially if most of your incoming links are from off-topics pages. The search engines may assume you have purchased cheap links from around the internet instead of great organic, voluntarily referred….links. While a few may not hurt, especially from some high PR sites – many don’t sound logical and would probably cause you problems. I’m even reasonably careful about what links I link to and share Google juice with. You don’t need to lead your visitors (and the search engines) off to scammy or inappropriate sites, especially if you run a DoFollow blog.
Definitely some great tips! What do you think about high PR sites that have the Top Commentator plugin on the sidebar? If you can consistently stay on the homepage of those sites, that has to be quality inbound link?
~ Kristi
I ran an experiment by regularly commenting on a few high-ranking and related blog sites. While my traffic from that site appeared in my site stats it was minimal. Not sure what impact it had with my ratings but overtime, you may gain regular visitors and subscribers to your site from those few extra visitors. I’d say any site with related content will probably send you visitors who are also interested in what you have to offer and would be helpful. At the end of the day, blogging is about populating the web with your interested ideas when you think they are worthwhile – taking your place in the conversation. Regular commenters often get a level of credibility that one-off or infrequent commmentors don’t. If your chosen blog (where you comment) doesn’t mind you commenting, then this is great.
I’ll make a plug for one of my frequent commentors – Baloot. While he gets a little bit of Google juice and some visitors from commenting on quite a few posts, his comments are always made with good intentions and I learn from what he says. He is a gentle critic of some things and an integrity checker for my design, blog functions and ideas. Over time, I am looking forward to developing relationships with others in the blogging community and enjoying this experience.
Hi and thanks for the tips.
I have been working on getting backlinks to my site and trying to increase my PR. This is somewhat hard and takes a lot of my time. My PR increased from 3 to 4 so I am glad that my effort has paid off.
When it happens, the founders are both happy and rich. ,
Your list of strategies explained me an idleness of some things I’ve done before. It would be good also if you write an all-round post about reputable directories to limit a wasted time for unuseful catalogues
This is very informative post i’ve seen today. I learned lot from you and hope you continue your great post, kindly do visit my blog also and give some feedback.
look, there is no best link strategy. if getting inbound links would be that easy, all sites would rank well, which is impossible. what matters the most before chasing IBLs is to have a good on page seo. lots of site owners try to get all kind of poor links and their sites are poor on seo. otherwise, what you mention follow the good seo practices.
best seo´s last blog ..Who will dominate the internet?
I agree that SEO is important – but it too is only one element. Nothing about this business is easy or guaranteed. You have to work hard and smart to get everything optimised and no one solution fits all sites.
However, as far as link building goes it is like buying tinned tomatoes. Some tins of tomatoes are packed with water and others are packed with tomato juice. This post was merely identifying where the water is and where the juice might be at.
Excellent diagram of what makes a good link and what does not. I have never seen anything like it before but it really helps those that are starting out understand the complexities of link building! Excellent that you comment on peoples comments too!
SEO Consultants´s last blog ..Overview of SEO Consultants
Thanks for the feedback. I like your site design – even if it isn’t Thesis Theme. I personally love a diagram that shows me what a page or two of words shows, to check my perception and to help memorise it. I wish more people used diagrams when explaining complex matters that could actually be simplified.
Very good post, very informative and i have learned something new because i didn’t know about the backlinks less than 50 links, ect…
Thanks! ^^
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