Backlinks and Other Outside Help - Part 5

Every page of your website could be perfectly optimized for your entire list of targeted keyword phrases. Your site design could be immaculate and expertly professional looking. Your product or service could be the absolute best of its kind in the entire world. However, none of that will make any difference because almost no website gets a good listing for anything without some outside help from other websites.

The search engines determined long ago that if a particular website is linked to by alot of other websites then it must be, in some way or another, a good website. So the search engines set their robots to follow those links from one website to another and that is basically how they were and are able to index so many billions of webpages. The more links they find on other sites going to your site, the more important the search engines will think your site is. The more important they think it is, the higher they will list it for the keyword phrases that it finds on it. Links to your site from other sites are known as backlinks. All links to your site help in some way, but only text based links can give you the most help.

Also, the search engines index and list the sites they find through links much faster than any sites submitted to them for consideration. So, once you have all of your site pages optimized with all your targeted keyword phrases, it is time to go out and find other sites that will put links on their pages back to your site. There are several ways you can accomplish that.

1. You can trade links with other sites. This is the most common way to start. You might be wondering, "Why would some other site want to link to mine?" The answer is because there are other people just like you getting started with their search engine optimization and they need outside help too. Obviously, if 100 new sites linked together amongst themselves then none of them would get any or very little benefit from it. So the key is to get other sites that aren't brand new like yours. Ones that are at least several months old AND are already in the search engines somewhere are the ones you want. They elect to trade links with you to try to get there own listings moved up and, since they are already in the search engines, a link on there site to yours gets your site noticed by the search engine robots the next time they come through to reindex their site. Which generally happens to all sites already in the search engines every 3 - 5 weeks at the most.
   
   *Note - Just like everything else, there's a right way and many wrong ways to trade links with other sites. We'll cover the details for that in the next lesson, The Do's and Don'ts of Link Trading.
   
   
2. You can get links from directory sites without having to link to the directory site. There are many, many, many directory websites. You can easily find them by doing a search. The more the directory is related to your content, product, service, or location the better. For example, if you sell widgets then you want to first do searches for widget directory, online widget directory, michigan widget directory (replace with your own location), and so on. Then you look for more general directories. Some charge a fee to get listed. Some might want a link back. Go with as many as you can find that don't require either to start. Then wait awhile and see where you site starts showing in the search engines. If it isn't high enough, then you do a few paid ones or trades.
   
   
3. You can buy links. There are several reputable services known as link dealers that you can pay either 1 time or monthly to get links to your site from other sites. This can be especially effective for getting links on what are known as "authority" sites. Authority sites are well known sites that have been around for many years and have many top 10 listings of your own. Getting a link on an authority site could instantly get you in the top 10 as well, especially if their content is relevant or compliments your own in some way. Be prepared to pay quite a bit to get it though because an authority site not only helps with your search engine placement. You'll also most likely get a good number of visitors directly from them as well. 

With all of the above, you will be able to submit your site link information into a form of some kind or you can send an email to the site requesting a trade. When you submit a link or place a link to your site on another site you need to consider a few things about the link itself. First, the link doesn't and shouldn't always go directly to your home page. Some links should also go to your interior site pages. That ensures that when the search engine robot follows the link to your site, it will see it from as many different angles as possible. If you only get links to your home page then it may take a year or more for the robot to locate and index all your site pages, especially if you have alot. But if you get links to multiple pages then ALL of your site pages will get indexed fairly quickly. When optimized correctly, every page of your website is a potential entry point and the faster you get them all indexed the more potential there is for visitors finding it.

The second most important thing about a link to your site is the actual text in the link. It doesn't have to be your website address. It doesn't have to be your company name. The text in the link itself should be one of the top-line keyword phrases targeted on the page that the link goes to. The text in the actual link is known as Anchor Text. If there is space to include addition plain text with the link then that is where you write a short description of your business, product, or service and include 1 or 2 of the other keyword phrases also on the page being linked to.

In summary, you should vary the page being linked to AND vary the text in the link so that you don't end up with every link going to 1 page and 1 targeted keyword phrase. It's ok to have the multiple links going to the same page with the same link text. Just don't do that exclusively. Also, you don't want be changing any links you might get. Set it and forget it. Spend your time getting more links, not changing ones you may already have.

Next, we're going to cover the right way to trade links with other sites.

Click Here to Learn The Do's and Don'ts of Link Trading - Part 6