I. Why Links Matter
The Two Essential Reasons for Building Links To Increase Traffic And Page Rank
Most sites have a links page – why? Well, there are two very important reasons why a web developer should consider having a Building Links To Increase Traffic And Page Rank.
- Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is only one way of getting the search engines to pick up that you are there. Something else that you must not neglect if you want your website to be noticed is obtaining links.
- Your website is offering a service to your visitors – links provide them with other sites of interest which they may want to visit. Although the retail industry might say they want people to stay on their site, rather than going anywhere else, carefully chosen links may be able to get people even more interested in the product you are selling! You may have to think laterally!
Good Links vs Bad Links
In the eyes of a search engine, there seem to be good links and bad links. Good links will get you higher up the Building Links To Increase Traffic And Page Rank and onto the top of the listings; bad links, at bestt will be ignored and at worst, could actually could against you and your site be llistmuch lower.
- A good link is one from a site which has high relevance to yours, and which has a good page rank.
- A bad link is one from an obvious link farm and has no contextual links to your sites.
II. Understanding Page Rank
What is Page Rank?
Before we go further, llet’stalk a little bit about page rank. Page rank is the ranking that Google gives to website pages and shows their importance as Google sees it. The Google Toolbar, which can be obtained from http://toolbar.google.com for free, is a useful tool as it can display the page rank of any webpage you are looking at.
The Page Rank Scale
The page rank (or PR) of a site ranges from 0 to 10.0 is You start; 10 would be exceptional! Although Google keeps the algorithms for working out PR very close to their chests, the progression through the numbers is probably on a logarithmic scale – that is, a site ranking 2 is many times more important than one ranking 1, not just 1 point.
Benefits of Higher Page Rank Links
When you are link building,, you should be trying to get links to your site from sites with a higher page rank than yours. Links from sites with good PR will immediately signal to the search engines that yours is a site worth indexing! The more links, the better!
III. Link Building Strategy Rules
Balancing PR and Relevance
So should you only link with sites with higher PR? Well, if everyone practised this,s, the chances of you getting any links for your embryonic site would be zero! A site may be 0 today, but that site may also be working hard to increase its rankings, and you may benefit from their progress. Also, do remember your human visitors. A site may be useful to them, even if not for your purpose of Building Links To Increase Traffic And Page Rank!
Golden Rules to Remember
S, Golden rules to remember:
- Aim to get links from high-ranking pages
- Put up links from any site that has high relevance to yours.
IV. Initial Link Building Steps
Identifying Relevant Organizations
First, think of sites which it would be useful for your visitors to be able to go to from your site. For example, if you are a specialist site, are there some national organisations that promote your sport, hobby, or industry? Your first step will be to email these organisations and ask if you can have reciprocal links with them.
Overcoming Size Concerns
Now, this may be a little bit of a David and Goliath situation, and many people feel put off because they think their new, immature website is far too small. You may not get any response to your emails, you may get a response refusing you, but you may find a national organisation with good page ranking that agrees to link to you! Be very pleased with this!
Immediate Link Placement
Immediately, someone agrees to have a reciprocal link with you. Put up their link on your website – just in case they decide to check!
Prioritizing Visitor Value
Now, think again about Building Links To Increase Traffic And Page Rank. Your customers or visitors – even if the big organisations have refused to put a link to you on their site, it may still be useful to put a link to them on yours for your visitors’ information. Always remember the whole goal of getting website traffic is to get and keep loyal customers or visitors – not just to attract search engine bots!
V. Finding Link Partners
Searching for Non-Competitor Sites
Now the hard work starts. Search the web for sites on the same subject matter as yours, but which are NOT competitors. Keeping an eye on the Google Toolbar, look for sites which have a better page rank than yours – ideally, the websites you are looking for will be ranked about 4 or 5higher-rankingng sites may be a bit snobbish towards novice sites
Thinking Outside the Box
What about people who supply goods and services to you – can they link to yours? What about customers? Try and think outside of the box here – if you have a sporting site, how about a link to a local photographer?
Offline Research Methods
Sometimes you can do good research away from the computer (yes, you can turn it off sometimes!). Trade magazines are often a good start – write to any email addresses and ask for a reciprocal link. You may find even if they do not have a links page already they may decide to add one! It never hurts to ask!
VI. Link Acquisition Methods
Finding Building Links To Increase Traffic And Page Rank:
When you are looking at websites check that they have a links page. If they do you may find there is a form on which you can submit the details on your website asking to be added to their links page or a suggest site add new link button so that it is simple to add your site.
Direct Email Approach
You may need to email a website if they don’t seem to be providing links. Don’t be too put off if there isn’t a relevant category for them to list your site in – they can always add more categories. If you don’t ask, you don’t get! If you do, you may well succeed!
VII. Link Page Management
Honoring Your Commitments
So don t be worried about emailing and asking for reciprocal links – but do make sure you put up the links you promise! This may lead you to think a little about your site – some people don t want to have their link at the end of a very long page.
Organizing Your Links Page
You should consider rotating banners so you can display more links, but keep the page simple. You may also need to restrict non-relevant links.
VIII. Forum and Community Participation
Demonstrating Your Expertise
If you know your subject, show it! And one of the best ways is to join a forum. When posting or answering a topic on the forum, always use a signature with your website address on it – if the forum users like what they read about you, they will click on the link to visit your website, and hey presto – you have more links coming into your site!
Hosting Company Forums
If your hosting company has a user forum, there may well be a section where you can showcase your new site – if so, you will get several visits through this. Lovely links for search engines and fodder for the link spiders!
Guestbook Entries
Also, if you visit the Guestbook of a relevant site,, you can leave your website address there. BUT PLEASE ONLY IF IT IS A RELEVANT SITE!
IX. Article Writing for Links
Understanding Article Marketing
Article writing as a technique for building links and traffic is a less obvious area that a lot of people don’t know about or understand.
Getting Started with Article Writing
Presumably, you are an expert in your area – or at least have useful information to share with others. So write an article! Not sure if you can? Well, start with the content of your site as a basis – you may already find you have done the hard work. Can’t think of a subject? Well, think laterally again. If you are selling artistic candles, for example, what about an article about the history of candle making? If you think hard enough, there probably is something you can write about! You may need to do a little research, but articles will help build your traffic and ranking. (And of course you can use them as content on your site!)
Article Length and Content Guidelines
Articles do not need to be lengthy – shorter is better. Probably no more than 600 to 1000 words. What you want to do in your article is write about something related to your site.
Article Submission Process
Now there are a number of websites where you can publish your article. Other websites can use your article for free, but they HAVE to include the author details – which, of course, means your website details. People using your article will form links back to your site – the more different sites using it, the better the links!
Article Directory Submissions
Better still, you can submit your article to any number of article sites. Ezine Articles is one of the biggest, but any search on Google will reveal several others.
Quality Requirements for Articles
Now, no one can pretend that this is an easy activity – it does take time. No one is going to use your article if it is not well thought out and tells them something new. It must not be boring either. But article submission is a really excellent way of improving your website’s position in the search engines, and should not be ignored.
Using Articles as Free Content
Of course,a rticles are also important resources for Webmasters in another way – free content for your site! There are sites out there which cater for an amazing number of subjects, and in themselves can be very useful and informative! Free articles for web designing, for example, can bring you other hints and tips for making the best of your website.
Attribution Requirements
If you use an article you must put on the full author s bio and a link back to their site. But the benefit to you is ready made content hopefully keyword rich which will attract the search engine bots like bees to honey!
X. Additional Link Building Methods
Web Rings for Link Building
Web rings give you links, and also provide your human visitors with other sites of interest which they may wish to visit.
XI. Long-term Strategy
The Reality of Website Marketing
Let’s face it – website design and publishing is a lot harder work than you probably first thought when you started designing your home page. But there is nothing more demoralising than having designed a wonderful site which you are extremely proud of – only to find you have no visitors at all!
Balancing Development and Marketing
You probably do want to spend all of your time fine-tuning your existing pages, putting up new ones, and anything which drags you away from this will be resented, but if you want a successful website, link building is something which has to be done.
Weekly Marketing Schedule
The best advice is to put one day a week aside for what we should call your marketing activities. Link building, along with SEO, is are extremely tedious activity. Build SEO into the way you construct your pages from the beginning (or in other words, consider not only the impact on the human eye as you design your page, but consider the spiders and bots at the same time!). And use your day a week to build links.
Quality Over Quantity Approach
A tip from experienced developers in this area is not to aim to get hundreds of links in a short space of time – this will again make the search engines suspicious. Instead, just aim to get one quality link at least once a month.
Marathon Mindset
Website marketing is not a short sprint – it is more like a marathon. Many will start the race, but a large number will fall beside the wayside. But if you acknowledge it will be hard work and keep slogging away, you will get to the end. There will come a time when you will receive a request from a reputable, well-ranked website, asking for a reciprocal link from you! That may not be the end, but be assured that it will give you a real buzz, and you will know then that most of your hard work will have been worth it!
