Julia: Welcome Bob. Thank you for taking the time to answer my
questions about link building. I'm going to jump right in ask
you why Web sites need links?
Bob: There are a number of reasons to have links pointing to
your site. But let’s start with the reason they were created in
the first place. The original purpose of the Internet was to
enable the sharing of information. For example, if a scholarly
paper existed on a server at the University of California, and a
professor at Oxford wanted to read it, the Internet made that
instantly possible. Now, if the Oxford professor had a paper
that referenced information from the UC paper, they could link
directly to that other document rather than just quoting from
it. So a hyperlink was intended as a way of connecting data,
ideas, and references together. It’s like saying, “if you’d like
further information on this topic, here’s a place to find it.”
When the Google search engine was created, its developers took
this into account. And drew the conclusion that a link was an
indication that the page being linked to was relevant to some
particular subject-matter.
So that’s a rather long introduction to a short answer to your
question. Web sites need links because they send traffic that’s
already targeted to their subject matter to other sites, and
because they help the search engines determine both their theme
and what the web as a community deems their importance to be.
Basically (although not absolutely), the more links that point
to a page, the more relevant that page is determined to be. In
addition, links are now considered the most reliable way (apart
from paying) to get a site into the search engines in the first
place.
While both Google and Yahoo allow you to submit a site to their
index, it’s clear that the best way to get the search engines to
pay attention to your site is to get a page that their spiders
already know about to link to yours. The spiders then follow
that link to your site, and add it to their index.
Julia: Thanks, Bob. But there are different types of links
aren't there? Can you explain differences?
Bob: As we discussed in the previous question, there are text
links from other sites. Some of these are reciprocal (that is,
they link to you and you link back to them) and others are
one-way (the owner of the other site decides, for whatever
reason, to link to your site and doesn’t expect you to link
back).There are also image links: banners, buttons, etc. These
have the advantage of standing out visually from the rest of the
page, but many people have become immune to the standard banner
ad and just ignore them, because it’s assumed they’re just
advertisements, and as such, not necessarily relevant to the
page on which they appear.
Then there are directory listings, where a link to your site
appears on a page containing links to numerous other sites in
what the directory editor has determined to be your particular
niche.
An important thing to consider regarding getting a link is the
code behind it. If your primary concern is to send traffic to
your site, this isn’t important. In that case, what you need to
think about is whether the link is going to send the right
people to you. But if you want the link to be recognized by the
search engines and to contribute to your ranking in searches,
you need the link to be in simple HTML, without JavaScript or
other code that will hide the link from search engine spiders.
There are also links that won’t help you at all, or will put you
in danger of losing your position on the search engines.
Guestbook spam, the practice of going to a site’s guest book
area and posting a message like “Nice site. Come visit mine,
at…” will do you no good. The search engines know that such
links carry no value, and just ignore them. The same is true for
free-for-all links pages, on which you can immediately add a
link to any site, without any editorial oversight.
Link farms are a far more dangerous subject. These are networks
of sites that are heavily cross-linked and offer to link to you
as long as you link back into the network, or host a page on
your site that serves as a directory of sites that the link farm
has linked to. The idea here is to abuse the power search
engines give to links by exponentially increasing the number of
links to your site, without regard for theme or value. You link
into the farm, and you have hundreds, perhaps thousands of links
pointing back to you. But the links are only there to increase
link popularity. The sites on which the links reside are not
intended to actually be viewed by people; they’re just intended
to give search engine spiders the mistaken impression that your
site is extraordinarily popular.
Julia: So, what's the best way to get legitimate and relevant
sites to link to yours?
Bob: Before you can get a site to link to yours, you first have
to find it. You need to do research on the subject-matter of
your site by searching on the keywords you hope people will use
to find it. The results of those searches will give you a list
of sites that are already performing well for those keywords.
You should then study those sites, so that you can write to the
webmaster and request a link in such a way that demonstrates
that you understand the purpose of their site. And give reasons
as to why you think their audience will find your site of
interest.
You can buy links from sites as well, sometimes on a single
page, and sometimes all across the site. These are just like any
other form of advertising. So before you part with your money
you need to determine if they’re worth the purchase price by
deciding if they’ll send you enough of the right traffic. That’s
why sites that offer the opportunity to buy links will make
claims about how much traffic they get and how their audience is
made up of “decision makers.”
Finally, there are directories, which normally require you to
drill down to find the most relevant category for your listing.
You can then (depending on the directory) either contact them
with your information, or fill out a form on the directory
itself and request a listing.
Julia: What would you say to Web site owners who are reluctant
to use links because they think it will take people away from
their site?
Bob: For one thing, a Web site without any off-site links is a
dead end, and there is some evidence to suggest that search
engines view sites that don’t link out as being less valuable.
Unless you’re willing to pay, you may have a hard time
convincing people to link to you if you’re not planning on
linking back to them. But it’s still possible, especially if
you’ve got content that’s so good people will want to link to
you anyway, but it’s definitely harder to get one-way links than
reciprocal ones. I’m not suggesting that people link directly to
their competitors. The idea is to link to sites that complement
the content that you’re providing. By doing so, you’re
contributing to the impression that your site is an authority on
your theme: not only do you have great information, but you have
links to other sources of information. That’s another reason for
people to come back to your site more often. And if you’re still
worried about sending people away from your site and never
seeing them again, you can set your off-site links to open in a
new window, by adding target=”_blank” to the code for the link.
If you do this, however, it’s a good idea for usability purposes
to let people know that the link will open in a new window.
Otherwise, people who have their browser windows maximized may
not realize what’s happened, and should they try to get back to
your site by hitting their back button they’re likely to be
confused when it fails to take them anywhere.
Julia: We often hear the term "Anchor text". Can your explain
what this means and why it's important?
Bob: Anchor text is the part of a text link that’s visible on
the page. On a Web page, that would look like this: :<a
href=http://www.juliahyde.com/>Search Engine Marketing and
Copywriting Services</a> ”Search Engine Marketing and
Copywriting Services” is the anchor text. What’s important about
it is that it tells both the user and the search engine spider
what the page the link points to is about. In a search engine
optimization project, getting links to your site that use your
keywords in the anchor text helps to get your page to rank
higher for those keywords. That’s why it’s important to have
something other than “click here” as anchor text.The power of
anchor text can be seen by the example of the practice of
“Googlebombing,” in which numerous sites will link to a
particular page using the same anchor text. If enough sites do
it, Google will rank that page at the top of its listings for
searches on that text. George W. Bush’ biography page on the
site of the White House is still number one in Google for the
query “miserable failure” about half a year after that
particular Googlebomb was created. Whether or not you personally
agree that those words do a good job of describing Mr. Bush,
Google accepts what it sees as the opinion of the general online
community. If enough pages tell Google that miserable failure
George W. Bush, then as far as Google is concerned, it must be
true.
Julia: Another thing we hear a lot about is Pagerank™—a tool
webmasters often use to determine whether a site is worth
linking to or not. What does this mean?
Bob: PageRank (not to be confused with “page rank”) is a part of
Google’s algorithm for ranking pages. There are numerous
theories as to how it’s calculated, but only Google knows for
certain. In any case, that’s not important to this discussion.
What matters is that PageRank is a measure of the value of a
page based on the links pointing to it, the value of the pages
on which those links reside,and the number of other links that
are on those pages. It’s strictly numerical, and has absolutely
nothing to do with relevance or value to the reader. In other
words, if I have a page about Shakespeare, and I link to two
pages, one about Shakespeare, and the other about the care and
feeding of parakeets, the same amount of PageRank will be passed
to both of those pages. The fact that one of those pages is
about the same subject as my page does not enter into the
calculation.
You can see an estimation of the PageRank of a given page if you
have the Google toolbar installed. But it’s important to keep in
mind that PageRank is not everything, nor is it the most
important thing. It’s one of many factors Google takes into
account when it ranks pages for queries, and it’s not at all
uncommon to see that a site that ranks on the top of a SERP
(search engine results page) has a lower PageRank than the pages
below it on the SERP.
One of the reasons people believe that PageRank is important is
that if you do a backlink check in Google by typing
“link:www.site.com” in the search box, you’ll generally (but not
absolutely) only see pages that link to the URL in question and
have a PageRank of 4/10 or higher. People have taken this to
mean that a link from a page with a lower PR doesn’t count, and
that simply isn’t true. It’s true that, all other things being
equal, the higher the PR of a page linking to yours, the more PR
it’s going to pass to your page, but as I said, PR is just one
aspect of Google’s algorithm, and every link apart from the
troublesome ones we spoke of earlier has some value.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that a page that shows a PR of
2/10 in the toolbar today may have a 5/10 or 6/10 a few months
from now.When I’m looking for sites from which I may wish to
request links, the only time what I see in the toolbar matters
to me is when I see that it has no PageRank at all. Assuming the
site isn’t new, that can sometimes be an indication that the
site has done something which caused Google to demote it. That
is, it may be what Google refers to as a “bad neighborhood,” and
as such, you should be extra careful in checking it out before
you agree to link back to it.
Julia: Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, Bob! I hope
you all will check out Bob's site at:<a
href=http://www.raisemyrank.com/> for more information about his
company.</a>
About the author:
Julia is an independent copywriter and consultant specializing
in search engine marketing and copywriting, direct mail, print
advertising and other marketing materials businesses need to
increase sales. Learn more about how Julia can help boost your
profits by visiting www.juliahyde.com. Or email
info@juliahyde.com. She'll get back to you right away.
