Getting inbound links

Modern search engines count the number of pages linking to yours, and consider each and every one of them a vote for quality.

However, not each vote is considered equal. Nor is link popularity the only factor determining search engine rankings.

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The trick is to get links from popular and authoritative sites covering the same topic as your own, i.e. to increase your link popularity.

On the Google Page Rank

Page Rank is an indicator used by Google to measure a webpage's link popularity. The algorithm used to calculate Page Rank is secret, but the most important factors are: (1) The number of pages linking to your page and (2) the Page Rank of the page linking to yours.

If you get many inbound links from authoritative, high PR, sites focusing on the same topic as yours, the PR of your pages will rise.

Note, though, that PR is not the only factor determining search engine rankings. A webpage with a medium PR (let's say PR 5) may outrank a webpage with a high PR (PR 7 or 8). The PR 10 grade is for high class mega sites only (Google, Apple etc.).

To be able to read the PR of a webpage, you normally use the Google Toolbar.

From the Lost Apocrypha of Search Engine Marketing:

"Pay attention class! Can anyone tell me what kind of bird this is? ... Marius?"

"That's a North American Google, Miss Ottmar. You can see that from its multicolored beak."

"Really? And what can you tell us about the North American Google?"

"Until the late 1990s it was a very rare bird, but now it has spread its habitat from Southern California to the whole world, replacing in part species like the High Mountain Eagle and Parus Inctomus."

"What has made it so successful?"

"It is a very democratic bird, miss. It eats anything that's popular. The more birds eat of a particular fruit or seed the more the Googlus Americanus will flock to that particular plant."

"So how do you attract the North American Google to your garden?"

"Give it a lot of tasty seeds to eat, Miss Ottmar."

The Link Popularity Factors

Link Popularity

The endless arms race between search engines and search engine optimizers has inspired the search engines to find new ways of measuring relevance, preferably using factors that cannot be unduly influenced (read: spammed) by webmasters.

Google led the way by introducing link popularity as a major factor in its ranking algorithms. The idea is quite brilliant. Google reckons that a site with a lot of inbound links that other webmasters find useful must be good, so it gives it an extra boost in the rankings.

There are at least four types of links, giving gains of varying intensity:

Links from the major directories

In general links from major search directories, i.e. Yahoo!, and the Open Directory count a lot (although not as much as they used to). Hence, you should do all you can to get listed in these directories.

Commercial sites must normally pay a fee to get listed in the main Yahoo! directory (yahoo.com). The fee is pretty high and at the moment Yahoo! directory listings do not get favorable treatment in Yahoo! results. Unless you have a large budget or a non-commercial site, we suggest you focus on the Open Directory.

Read our article on Preparing your site for the search directories to learn more about how to convince the editors that your site is worth listing.

Links from related sites

Inbound links from sites related to your topic may also give a fair boost in engines such as Google and Yahoo!.

Google groups related pages in clusters devoted to a specific topic. At the center of these clusters you will find pages with a lot of inbound links from sites in the same cluster. If you can get a link from one of these major sites, you are in luck, as the search engine will find your site more relevant for queries related to this specific topic.

It helps a lot if the text of the inbound link contains the keyword phrase your are optimizing the page for.

Note that search engines such as Google try to find out what the main topic of your page is. One way of doing this is to analyze the main subject matter of sites linking to yours.

Teoma will also analyze the main keyword phrases of your entire site in order to pinpoint the main topic.

Links from unrelated sites

Links from unrelated sites may also count. However, do not expect links from your uncle’s sailing site to do much for your pet project on Tibetan philosophy.

A sudden influx of links from completely unrelated sites may trigger a spam alarm in the search engines. This might actually get you penalized search engine ranking wise.

Avoid link farms!

Links from free-for-all link farms that are set up to increase the participants' link popularity should be avoided at all costs.It didn't take long before clever people out there found ways to spam the link popularity ranking, by establishing link farms where the members are guaranteed links from the other member sites in return for adding a similar link page to their own site.

Google has started punishing sites that have link-farm pages, and other search engines are expected to follow suit.

If you are a member of one of these schemes, delete the relevant link page and ask to be removed from the others.

There are also a lot of free-for-all link collections, “directories,” and “search engines” out there, that are set up to harvest the e-mail addresses of webmasters.

We have reason to believe that these also may lead to a loss of points in the near future. This is why you should not make use of automatic submission services that will submit your site to “thousands” of search engines.

Find related sites

Next you should try to get your site listed at the most important sites in your field of interest. In order to achieve this, you should do the following.

1. To find sites related to your own, search the relevant categories in Yahoo! and the Open Directory. , or do a search in Google for a relevant keyword phrase and see what pops up. Then study some of the most promising to find out which sites are the most popular in this field. You can also check out sites that have links to your major competitor (see below for link lookup).

2. Make a content-rich site of high quality that is bound to interest the editors of the sites you are approaching.

3. Make a “recommended links” section at your own site with sites that might interest your visitors. Yes, you may lose some visitors this way, but the chances are that they will come back to a site that offers a directory that will help them find what they are looking for. Each link should be accompanied by a description.

Actually, the most effective link pages are those that include short reviews of the relevant sites. Optimize these pages for selected keyword phrases, and voilà, you get some extra legitimate doorway pages for free!

Reciprocal linking

4. Write a personal mail to the editor or webmaster of the relevant site and tell her or him that you like the site so much that you have included a review in your resource section.

This is, of course, very flattering, and the person at the other end is bound to visit your site to read what you have written. Therefore, make sure to include the address of the review in the mail.

In your mail you may suggest (but not demand) a reciprocal link. Include a short presentation of your site (two or three paragraphs) and tell her or him how such a link will benefit their visitors. Suggest where on their site a link to your site will be appropriate.

By doing this, you show the recipient that this is more than a standard formula mail, and you are making it easy for them to include a link.

Make sure that the text of the proposed link includes the keyword phrase the page is optimized for. Hence, for the Pandia Search Engine Marketing 101 tutorial, a link named Search Engine Marketing 101 will be much more efficient than a link that simply said Pandia. After all, "search engine marketing" is what this site is about.

However, all your inbound links should not have the same link text. That will definitely make the search engines suspect foul play.

Google gives a lot of weight to the link text itself, and -- to a lesser degree -- also to the text surrounding the link. Hence having some links where the main keywords are in the surrounding text will be fine.

Do not forget to include your Web and email addresses in your letter. Keep the outgoing mail, so that you remember which sites you have approached.

To get more general inbound links, you may consider starting affiliate and award programs. You could also take part in relevant online discussion forums that allows you to include your URL in your signature or member profile.

You will soon find that some of your inbound links do not show up in a few of the search engines. It is tempting to submit these pages to these search engines.

However, we believe you should not do this, unless you have asked the webmaster of the site for permission. Search engines may punish sites that submit too many pages in a given period of time. The site you are trying to help may be approaching that limit.

Some search engines let you do a special search to find sites linking to a special site. We have gathered the relevant search syntax at our submit site page.

Link building, social media style

Web 2.0 is a buzzword for the increasing importance of social sites, i.e. websites where the readers contribute more to the content of the site than the owners themselves.

There are especially three types of social sites that are of importance for search engine marketers: bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, blog trackers and search engines like Technorati, article recommendation sites like digg, and social networks like Facebook, Google+ and twitter.

The main function of bookmarking sites is to help people gather their bookmarks or favorite sites online, making them accessible on any computer.

However, these sites will also generate list of popular web sites and pages, generating traffic. And who knows, a good headline may attract bloggers, leading to more inbound links.

Because of this it is a good idea to make use of the most important ones.

Needless to say, this systems rewards sites with a large number of fresh articles. So do the blog search engines. Many bloggers use these services to track articles within their field of interest.

Make sure your articles are available. Add your RSS feed to all of the blog search engines found at Pandia Powersearch.

Then there are sites like digg and Reddit, where users suggest and vote for interesting articles.

If you can get your article on the front page of digg, your servers will have a tough time handling all the traffic. And again, many of the users of digg are bloggers themselves, and may write about your article.

A word of warning: If you make use of these services, do make use of them beyond proposing your own articles. The active contributors know how to spot a spammer.

Facebook is a closed system, and Bing is the only search engine that has integrated Facebook data in its search engine results. Google can only make use of public profile pages. That does not mean that a Facebook presence does not help your search engine rankings. The point is to make people write about you and link to you, and if a Facebook entry is what makes them do that, Facebook becomes a useful search engine marketing tool.

We know for a fact that Google make use of Twitter data when determining search engine rankings. That is: A link in a tweet from an authoritative "tweep" may give you a slight boost in rankings. What's even more important is the fact that Google uses twitter to identify new content, which means that a mention in a tweet may get your new page indexed in minutes, instead of days!

It therefore make sense to establish a twitter account and use that account to gain legitimacy and credibility online. That does require a lot of work, though.

Note also that the search engines now include social media content in search engine results, often integrated in normal web search results. They may also include a separate section for "real time" results, which often is links to twitter tweets.

Link strategies: the risk involved

In November 2003 Google applied a new "filter" to its search engine algorithm that reduced the ranking of some heavily optimized pages for some selected popular search queries. Google was clearly tired of webmasters trying to influence search results without giving searchers the quality content they look for.

Since then google has tightened the screw and is now actively punishing web pages which are aggressively gathering links. The normal tip off for google is when a web site gets a large number of inbound links from unrelated web sites with the same link text in a very short time.

However, if you do not overdo it, you have no reason to worry. You need a significant number of incoming links targeting the exact same search phrase to trigger this penalty.

Remember though, that in order to make sure that your site keeps its good rankings, you must turn it into a content rich and "authoritative" site that attracts visitors for the information it provides. Google does not owe you as a webmaster anything, and can at any time change its algorithms.

One thing is certain, however: Google wants happy searchers that come back and use their search engine again and again. That means that they will always reward sites that provide relevant content!

GO TO THE NEXT PAGE: On search engine submissions >>>

Contents

1 Search Engine Marketing 101
2 Selecting Search Keywords
3 Search Engine Friendly Code
4 Search Engine Friendly Web design
5 Link Popularity
6 Search Engine Submissions