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Get enough inbound back links to your site from other quality sites with the
correct anchor and link text, and you can be #1 on Google without any
webpage optimization or other website promotion - that's the power of links.
Using an effective link building
strategy is good website promotion
By establishing back links from other sites you will receive traffic
from those sites, free traffic, and at the same time your value in
Google's eyes will go up. Your link popularity is a measure of the
quality of your content. The better the content the easier it
is to get back links.
Back links to your website
Your back links
are an important part of any successful website marketing plan.
They are helpful with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they help
demonstrate the link popularity and importance of your website to the search
engines.
They can bring you
traffic since visitors to other sites can click the link and go to your
site. How much traffic you receive is largely up to the site sending you
the visitor. If you are just on a list of links on someone's
"Resource" page, on a site that gets little traffic, you won't get much,
if any, traffic.
Embedded Links
On the other hand, if
you have a link embedded in an article on a related topic on another
site, that recommends you as an expert on the topic, and it's a high
traffic site as well, then you can expect a lot of traffic from your
back link from that site. The search engines are not stupid.
They will give much more importance to such a link, and thus they will
give your rankings a boost as well. Obtaining embedded links is one of
the most effective link building techniques.
In order to get your site recognized by the
main search engines and obtain a high page ranking, you need to be able
to get your site noticed by engines like Yahoo and Google by having
plenty of high quality back links.
Anchor text
The text that the visitor clicks on to go to your site is called the
anchor text (Usually blue and underlined). The anchor text is one of the
places that the search
engines use to determine what your site is about. Simply having "Click
Here" does nothing for your site. A much better example of good
quality anchor text would be "Horse training experts", which tells the
search engine what your site is about.
Link text
The text surrounding the
anchor text, or link text, is important as well. Again, the search engines are no
dummies and will know what the subject matter around the link is...like
whether it is in a list of other links, or embedded in a related article
etc. Your anchor text and link text should describe you high quality
content in a way that pulls people to your site.
However, it is difficult to obtain ideal links, and takes two
things...great content and time. Only by having very good content
will you find other quality sites that will want to link to your site.
It doesn't happen overnight, be prepared for a long wait for those high
quality links. The old adage "content is king" is absolutely correct.
One way links back to your site
Back links from another site to your site are called "one way links" if
you don't have a link back to the other site. In the eyes of
Google, one way links mean you have good enough quality content to
attract the without linking back so it must be good content.
Getting listed in directories will provide you with some one way
links.
Reciprocal linking
Many sites engage in reciprocal linking; trading links with other
sites. There is nothing wrong with trading links with other sites.
However, some links are better than others. My advice would be to
go ahead and trade links...you need links...but try to get links from
related good-quality sites.
If you plan on trading links you need a "links" or "resources" page
where you can list your link partners. I like to start the page
with a few links to high profile, high quality sites related to my site.
Google likes a few links to other high quality sites. It helps.
Anchor and link description text
When providing your "link partners" with your anchor text if they
allow you to specify it, do not use the same identical text for more
than one link if possible. Search engines get suspicious when they
see multiple links with identical anchor text. It could be that
you are link spamming. Mix it up. This is a chance to sprinkle in some
help for those long-tailed keywords.
Another thing to avoid is having a whole bunch of links established
in a brief period of time. Again, it looks to the search engines as link
spamming. The natural way you would pick up unsolicited links
would be slowly over time, and so that is what you should strive for.
If you use one of those services that will submit your site to thousands
of search engines or whatever, don't do it. Google will see all
those non-related sites pop up all at once and it will give a big fat 0
value for them. It's a waste of money. Don't waste your website
promotion budget on them.
Internal linking is important as well. The most important pages
should have the most links pointing to them. The search engines
use your internal linking schemes to help determine how important the
pages are and what they are about. Use your anchor text and
surrounding text to help show the engines what the pages are about and
how important they are.
Your site should include a sitemap that has a link to every page on
your site to be sure the search engines can easily spider all of your
pages.
So go out there increase you link popularity by using effective link
building techniques you've learned here. Trade links, get back links, especially one way
links, using great anchor text, and use the power of linking to your
advantage. It's the best website promotion you can find.
More about links
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