Linking Strategies Articles

Linking Strategies - Tom Antion

Inbound Linking Strategies:
*A great linking strategy can increase your page rank. This can make your site an "authority site" and helps get higher search results in the search engines.

*Try to get as many good quality, one way links, and links related to your topic into your site as you can. Persue "white listed" or "authority" sites.......you will look more favorably to the search engines.

*Anchor text with quality keywords linking to your site creates favorable page rank. Create several versions of anchor text code to give to websites so you can control the keywords you use.

*Trade links with higher page ranking sites than your own. Ideally, get as many links to your site as you can, but keep link trading to 25% or less of total links.

*Use tools such as Alexa.com and Marketleap.com/publinkpop to see who's linking to your competition. These can be links to persue on your own site as well.

*Links to avoid: Linking schemes, linking triangles (a-b-c-a), free link listing sites, and buying links to your site. This can raise flags to the search engines and your site may be penalized and result in lower page rank.
*Use links that look "natural" coming into your site. Use recipricol links and links from directories and articles. Use a deep linking strategy: creating links to other pages of your site other than the "home" page.

Outbound Linking Strategies:
*Avoid naming your link page "Links". Use "Resources" or something of that nature. Too many outbound links can hurt your page rank, so use "no follow" tags in your HTML and the search engines will not recognize them.

*Be sure and use Google.com to search for bad sites. Typing the URL into the search box will bring up sites so you can see the page rank with your Google toolbar. If the site does not show up, it may have a page rank of "0" or may even have been banned. Linking to these sites will get you penalized with the search engines.

*Make sure that links clicked on in your site will open a new browser window. That way, when your visitor is finished looking at the linked site, your site will be there waiting when they come back.