| Recent
Articles |
Blogs Can Help eBay Affiliates
A lot of people write blogs and place affiliate links on their sites, and we have
a few suggestions to help make them work better. It's easy enough to create a
blog...
PageRank
Panhandlers Beg Links on Street Corners - Get a Job!
I get a steady stream of link requests for three of my own sites and a half dozen
others that I manage for clients. For about the last year, I've had a...
Submit Your Blog To DMOZ
Everyone talks about getting their blog or website listed in the free Open Directory
Project, better known as DMOZ, but not everyone knows what to do about it.
Revisiting
the PR Licensing Debate
There's a debate in PR circles-a decades-old debate-that centers around whether
PR practitioners should be licensed. We can never be viewed as a real profession,
the argument goes, until we all...
Blog Links: Internal Page Link Benefits
High search engine rankings are important to most bloggers and website owners.
To achieve those page one search placements, a combination...
Link
Popularity Reports
As link popularity is one of the most important tools you can adopt to raise your
search ranking, you need to take apt steps, from time to time, to stand ahead
your competitors...
|
|
|
|
12.05.05
Linking Strategy In The Post-Jagger Period
 By
Donald Nelson
"Please take down my link." I never thought
I would live to see the day that I would get an email like this, but the latest
Google update has caused some people to panic.
This particular person thought that his site would be penalized if he had a link
coming from a site in an unrelated field. Well, following the Jagger update how
should we approach linking? Should we "nuke" our reciprocal links directories
altogether? Or is there a sensible way to continue linking?
Google doesn't explain the details of their updates and algorithm changes. It
is widely thought they made moves to crack down on spamming and techniques designed
to fool their indexing efforts. And possibly sites that added lots of irrelevant
links in a short period were penalized. Google representatives have also stated
publicly, in forums, that if you link to a "bad neighborhood" you could be penalized.
I can't get inside the Google algorithm anymore than anyone else, but I strongly
believe that linking should go on in a "natural" way, in a way that predates the
linking craze which Google itself helped to create. Here are some elements of
a natural linking strategy.
>>>View, save & organize resumes online.
Take a FREE Test Drive
Now!
1. Link to the kinds of sites that will provide good resources
for your web visitors.
This is actually the very idea behind Google's system of Page Rank. Sites that
are "cool", that are informative and interesting will get "votes" or links from
other sites on the basis of their value as a web resource. So, link to those sites
that are worthy of being in your link directory.
2. Don't link
blindly just because someone is willing to give you a link in return.
Check out any site that is proposing a link exchange with you. Are they a possible
spam site? A site that has no content and only ads, or a site in fields such as
online gambling, pornography, or similar areas would be suspect. If the site has
a page rank of 0 and also has none of its interior pages indexed by Google, then
it may have been penalized. You can tell how many of its pages are indexed by
making this search: site:www.suspectsite.com .
3. Link to those
sites that cater to your target audience.
In the early days of the Internet, the main incentive to link was that it would
provide you with some targeted traffic. This concept is still valid. If you have
a site about yoga, then find sites whose visitors would likely be interested in
yoga and propose a link exchange with them. You may or may not raise your page
rank with this exchange, but you will get the kind of visitors that you are looking
for.
4. Get One-Way Non Reciprocal Links
There are two primary ways to get these valuable one-way links. The first way
is to make your site so informative, so useful, so authoritative, that people
will mention it or list it without you having to do anything at all. This is of
course not an easy task, but it should be a target. You should strive to be the
best in your field and if you can approach this goal then you will be noticed
and you will get links without even asking for them.
Another way to get one-way links is to write articles and get them published on
other websites. You are probably an "expert" in the field covered by your website.
Share your expertise with others in the form of 600-800 word articles. You can
distribute your articles in the article distribution groups of Yahoo! Go to http://groups.yahoo.com
and make a search for article publishing or free reprint articles and you will
find a number of places where you can place your article. Remember to include
a link back to your site in the resource box at the end of the article.
So, don't press the panic button. Keep your link and resource directories but
build them up in a way that adds value to your site and helps you to get an extra
flow of targeted traffic. If you have the skill to get non-reciprocal links, then
by all means get them.
About the Author:
Donald Nelson is a web-developer, social worker and editor. He is the proprietor
of A1-Optimization, http://www.a1-optimization.com
and provides search engine optimization, copywriting, reciprocal linking and other
web promotion services. |
