Why
Getting Links is guaranteed to get you traffic
Part 1 of "Creating a Successful
Link Program"
by Rick Hendershot,
Linknet Network
Getting links from other websites is one of
the more tedious aspects of website promotion. That's because you cannot
effectively automate the process. Any website promotion expert will tell you
the same thing. You simply have to bear down and do it, one link at a time.
What makes it even more unexciting is that
you cannot just do your linking chores for a couple of intensive weeks,
and then put it behind you. Doing it right requires an on-going effort that
takes months. To get its full benefit you must be constantly on the lookout
for useful links. And you must be constantly going out there and creating
links.
Let me tell you why it works that way. In the
other articles, and especially in my free course on
Linking Strategies I give you some suggestions on how to
get hundreds -- even thousands -- of links to your site.
What is a link?
First, let's be clear what we are talking
about. There are two kinds of links: "outbound" (or out-pointing) links and
"inbound" (or in-pointing) links. Outbound links are links on your site
that point to other websites (or other pages within your own
site). Inbound links point from outside sites (or other
pages within your site) to specific pages within your site.
Therefore, as you can see, any specific link
is both outbound and inbound, depending on your point of view. A link on your
site — www.yoursite.com — pointing
to my site —
www.small-busines-online.com — is outbound for you, and inbound for me.
What you ultimately want are INBOUND links —
ones that point from outside sites to yours. Why? Because inbound links bring
traffic from the other site to yours, and they enhance your web presence by
making your site more important in the eyes of the search engines like Google,
Yahoo, and MSN.
Why do you need links?
Getting links from
outside sites serves several important purposes. First, links from sites that
share your same target audience create an important source of direct traffic to
your site. A visitor to a linked site sees the link to yours, clicks on it, and
becomes your visitor.
Why do people click
on these links? Because they view a link to an outside source as an endorsement.
They assume the webmaster is saying "Here is a source you will find interesting
or helpful".
Why does Google
value links?
Another important
reason to trade links is because Google (and other Search Engines) rank your
site higher if it has a number of inbound links. The SEs assume that links
to and from other sites indicate other site owners in your area of interest
consider your site worth looking at. Therefore, the more inbound links
you have, the more your site is viewed as important and a good source of
information for your specific target audience.
This was the thinking that led the founders of
Google to develop the "Page Rank" system. That is why Google and most of
the other major Search Engines give a much better ranking to sites with a number
of incoming
links — especially if they are from relevant high traffic pages.*
Page Rank and "Relevancy"
These days, the serious Search Engines can tell
what a site is about by analyzing the content. This is especially the case with
Google. This allows the SEs to compare web pages according to subject matter,
and to determine which pages are "relevant" to which others. As I mentioned
above, a link from a "relevant" page is given more weight by Google than just any old
link.
For example, let's say you have a page about "Golden
Retrievers". Incoming links from other pages that deal with Golden Retrievers,
dogs, or pet care are considered "relevant" to your site. The more an outside
page focuses on pets, and particularly Golden Retrievers, the more "relevant" it
is considered to yours. These links, along with the actual content of your site,
are analyzed by Google to arrive at what is called your Google Page Rank. So the
more links you have from "relevant" pages, the better your Page Rank.
In other words Google uses a number of important
factors to arrive at a ranking for your site. First is the actual content
of your site — analyzed in terms of keywords and key phrases. Second is the
number of inbound links to specific pages. Third is the Page Rank of
the pages linked to yours. And fourth is the relevance of the pages
linked to yours.
This has a direct bearing on your linking
strategy. You should not just pile up links. That will not help your
incoming traffic, and will not help your search engine results. You should look for
links from relevant sites, and particularly ones with a high Page Rank.
In future articles I will discuss
some strategies for finding and linking to the kind of sites that will give you
the most benefit.
NOTES
*From
Anatomy of a
Search Engine: "Another intuitive justification is that a page can have a
high PageRank if there are many pages that point to it, or if there are some
pages that point to it and have a high PageRank. Intuitively, pages that are
well cited from many places around the web are worth looking at. Also, pages
that have perhaps only one citation from something like the Yahoo! homepage
are also generally worth looking at. If a page was not high quality, or was a
broken link, it is quite likely that Yahoo’s homepage would not link to it."
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"Creating a Successful Link
Program" ---------------------------------------------------
Rick Hendershot is a writer and internet publisher. He publishes the Linknet
Network and several syndicated columns including
Sell It!
Online.
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