  |
|
|
View previous topic
::
View next topic
|
| Author |
Message |
Amadeo
Joined:
28 Oct 2004
Posts:
34
|
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 1:39 am
Post subject: More Links = Higher Rankings: How do I get them?
|
 |
|
So I'm working on my site and content now, but I keep getting hooked by traffic generation techniques. I seem to have found a happy little medium - work on the site for a while, then investigate traffic generation for a while.
Some new things that I've discovered...
My top competitors have really poor sites. When I put myself in the mindset of a potential customer and then visit their site, I'm disappointed. I've made a list of all the stuff that I could do that would make the site more worthwhile. I've also surveyed many friends that have, at one time or another, surfed similar sites and/or bought similar products. The big questions that I ask them are:
1. Did you find what you were looking for based on what you typed into the search engine? - The general response is "not really."
2. Would you go back to this site? - Response: "no."
3. Can you remember the url? Response: "no."
4. Can you think of any urls that you've heard of that are in this market? Response: They rattle off 3-5 big players that do a lot of offline advertising.
5. What would have made visiting this site worthwhile to you? Response: I get a laundry list of answers that I quickly right down.
So, that's what I'm working on regarding my site.
Now, in looking at getting relevant external links (building my link reputation) I have some questions:
1. What's the best way to find other sites that I could ask to link to my site?
2. How should I approach them?
3. What should I expect?
I've heard that you should freely request links, but be stingy in reciprocating. That just seems weird to me, if we all did that, we'd just be a bunch of little islands out here on the internet sea.
I also suspect that each webmaster that I approach will want to know "What's in it for me?" If I were approached, I'd want to know the same thing.
So, I hope that's clear - anyone have any advice on building a good link reputation?
Respectfully,
Amadeo |
|
| Back to top |
  |
 |
AllanGardyne
Site Admin
Joined:
02 Jul 2003
Posts:
6302
Location:
by the beach, Australia
|
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 2:59 am
Post subject: Re: More Links = Higher Rankings: How do I get them?
|
|
|
| Amadeo wrote: |
1. What's the best way to find other sites that I could ask to link to my site? |
The simplest, cheapest way is to type key phrases in your industry into the main search engines and see what sites come up. You can speed up the processs by using software such as Arelis which finds other sites, but it's not essential.
Also, look at those sites' links pages or resources pages, and see which sites they are linking to, and look at THEIR links pages.
| Quote: | | 2. How should I approach them? |
I've described that in detail in this article:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/reciprocal-links.shtml
| Quote: | | 3. What should I expect? |
It depends on your industry, and how well you write your email. If your site is in the horribly overcrowded Internet marketing field, only a frustratingly tiny percentage of people will reply. If you're in an obscure niche where most of the sites are hobby sites rather than than commercial sites, you should get a better response.
In most niches nowadays, website owners will receive lots of spammy link requests from rubbishy sites, so you have to work very hard to make your email different.
| Quote: | | I've heard that you should freely request links, but be stingy in reciprocating. |
I think it makes sense to be very selective about which sites you link to. Ideally, your links page or resources page should be a page of recommended sites that are well worth a visit. If you create that sort of page, you're adding value to your site and your visitors will appreciate it. It's a way of helping build your good reputation online.
Incidentally, this site links to thousands of other sites. Those links don't stop it from getting good rankings in search engines. I think some people go overboard trying to hoard PageRank. If you want to receive, you have to give.
| Quote: | | I also suspect that each webmaster that I approach will want to know "What's in it for me?" |
Absolutely, so don't ask for links until to own a website that is worth linking to. You can consider article swaps as well as link swaps.
| Quote: | | So, I hope that's clear - anyone have any advice on building a good link reputation? |
Hang on! First I want to make sure you understand the jargon. 
You want link reputation and link popularity.
Link reputation refers to the anchor text, the words people click on in a link to visit your site. As Lynn said, it's very important.
For example, if your site is about "blue widgets", it's handy to have a domain name called "blue-widgets.com" because when people provide a link to your site, they very often use your domain name as the anchor text.
If you domain name is ABC.com and your site is about blue widgets, you probably DON'T want people to use "ABC.com" as the only words in the link. It would be more helpful if they linked to "ABC.com - best blue widgets", or just "blue widgets".
I don't want get too complex, but you need to know that if all the links to your site contain exactly the same anchor text, Google will sniff that out and regard it as artificial. So you want mix them up a bit, while still using good key phrases.
For example, links to this site say all sorts of different things, such as "Allan Gardyne", "AssociatePrograms", "Associate Programs.com", AssociatePrograms.com - affiliate programs directory", etc. This sort of variety tends to happen naturally over a few years, so you want the links to your site to look natural, too.
Link popularity is the number of links to your site. You want more than numbers, though, you want links from popular, related sites.
One of the most effective ways to get links to your site is to distribute articles to other websites and to article directories, with a link back to your site in a resource box at the end. From your article directories, your articles can be picked up and published on other sites, so there's a snowballing effect.
This could be one of the most effective ways to spend your time.
If this sounds a bit daunting you can hire people at places like elance and rentacoder to write articles for you.
I assume you've submitted your site to niche directories.
There are quite a few discussions on article directories on this forum.
Whew! Enough typing. Go get some links!
_________________
Allan Gardyne
AssociatePrograms.com - You're here. Explore it! |
|
| Back to top |
 |
|
Lynn Terry
Joined:
16 Aug 2003
Posts:
153
Location:
Tennessee, USA
|
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 8:34 pm
Post subject:
|
|
|
Great post by Allan!
I agree that submitting articles is a great way to get quality inbound links.
In addition to the great tips above, you want to consider exchanging links on internal pages. Not just from "my site" to "your site" but from "my roses page" to "your roses page" on a gardening site, etc.
Link to sites that make sense from a visitor perspective. And seek out the same types of links.
I do NOT like spammy generic link exchange request emails, and rarely respond to them. And when I am requesting a link, I send a much more personalized email. I generally find out the site owners name and address them personally. I compliment them on their site, and mention specific internal pages that I found interesting. I suggest a link exchange from my internal page to theirs, and give them the code to use (copy & paste) to make it easy on their end. I also go ahead and add the link to their site and show them where they can see that.
Yes all of this takes more work... but it's WELL worth it!
_________________
Lynn Terry
ClickNewz! Internet Marketing Blog |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Phil Tanny
Joined:
22 Aug 2003
Posts:
1324
Location:
Gainesville Florida USA
|
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:59 am
Post subject:
|
|
|
All I can add to the great posts above is this.
Focus your link building efforts on people who have taken some action that makes clear they are interested in exchanging links.
There are many sites now where people sign up to meet other webmasters who want to exchange links.
Don't get bogged down in writing every webmaster in your niche, or in trying to convince somebody to link.
Find the people who have already decided on their own they want to meet you, and talk to them.
And of course, create a site such folks will be proud to link to.
Best of luck!
_________________
Free Forum And Ezine Hosting
http://Engage-Engine.com |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Amadeo
Joined:
28 Oct 2004
Posts:
34
|
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2005 2:09 am
Post subject:
|
|
|
Thanks for replying, Phil!
Ok so you wrote: "Focus your link building efforts on people who have taken some action that makes clear they are interested in exchanging links."
About the only action that I can think of that's clear is if they contact me with a request to exchange links.
You also wrote: "Find the people who have already decided on their own they want to meet you, and talk to them."
I will talk to anyone that wants to meet me and I look forward to the day that that will happen!
Your points above are well taken, however - do you have any suggestions as to how I might be able to build those relationships with other webmasters when I'm just the new guy on the block with a site buried so deep it'll never be found on a search engine? Afterall, one of the main (not the only one, though) points is to have a good number of relevant links to get higher search engine rankings, right?
Respectfully,
Amadeo |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Phil Tanny
Joined:
22 Aug 2003
Posts:
1324
Location:
Gainesville Florida USA
|
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:06 am
Post subject:
|
|
|
Hi Amadeo,
| Amadeo wrote: | | About the only action that I can think of that's clear is if they contact me with a request to exchange links. |
What I'm suggesting is that you contact people who have made it clear they want to be contacted about link swaps. There are many sites set up for no other reason than to be a place where link swapping webmasters can meet. I have such a site, see sig.
I'm sorry I don't have a longer list of URL's to offer, but I'll bet this page will give you a good start.
http://www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mp_Linking
| Amadeo wrote: | | do you have any suggestions as to how I might be able to build those relationships with other webmasters when I'm just the new guy on the block with a site buried so deep it'll never be found on a search engine? |
There are lots of other people in the same situation. I get signups continually from people with a page rank of zero. Work with them for starters. As you get more popular, aim your efforts at other sites that are at about the same level as you. (PageRank can be a rough guide to this)
Writing articles and posting them at the article directories is a good way to get links. It doesn't matter what your pagerank is in that case, because you're not linking back. Write the very best article you can, let it sit a week, and then rewrite it. Then submit it to all the article directories. You can build your pagerank that way before you get involved in link swapping if you want.
If at all possible, try to make site that's good enough that people will link to it just because they like it. That's pretty challenging, but long term that might be the best way to get links.
It's easy to get burned out on building links. You might schedule an hour every day (or whatever) to work on links as a regular part of your routine for the whole history of your site. Spend the rest of your time making a site that merits links. Pace yourself, and think long term.
Hope something in there helps!
_________________
Free Forum And Ezine Hosting
http://Engage-Engine.com |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Lynn Terry
Joined:
16 Aug 2003
Posts:
153
Location:
Tennessee, USA
|
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:07 pm
Post subject:
|
|
|
| Phil Tanny wrote: | | It's easy to get burned out on building links. You might schedule an hour every day (or whatever) to work on links as a regular part of your routine for the whole history of your site. Spend the rest of your time making a site that merits links. Pace yourself, and think long term. |
Great Advice 
_________________
Lynn Terry
ClickNewz! Internet Marketing Blog |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Private Messages
Log in
