How To Use Links To Optimize Your Site For Google.
The importance of your site is determined by linking. Search Engines like Google rate how important your site is by how many links there are to your site.
Not all links have an equal value. What determines the value of the link is its relevancy to the page it is linked to. The more relevant the page is the greater the value of the link. If not just the page, but the whole site is relevant the link is even more valuable.
Here are some ways to get quality links to your site:
Reciprocal Links
Once upon a time they were considered very good, today they don’t have the value they once did but they are still useful. It is important that the links you get in this way are very relevant to the content in your site. This way reciprocal links will still increase your ranking.
Article Writing.
This is the best way of creating links that can be viewed as very relevant. It is a long slow tedious journey as it means regularly writing articles and submitting them to article directories. These articles will link back to your site by leaving a hyperlink in the bio section. Most article sites will not allow hyperlinks in the body of the article. You can submit your articles to hundreds of article directories. Here are some you should submit to: EzineArticles.com, ArticleCity.com, and GoArticles.com.
Link Farms
If you come across a link farm go the other way. A link farm is a site of scrolling pages with countless links. These links are bad. They can actually kill your rankings. They are really part of a spammer’s network. Never link to any of these sites as it can downgrade your ranking with Google.
Directories
Directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ and other reputable directories can greatly increase the value of your links. Try to get your site listed with DMOZ. It’s not easy but well worthwhile. To do so you will need to find the perfect category and submit your site. Keep submitting your site every 4 – 6 months until you are listed.
It is easier to get listed with Yahoo. Easier in one way and that is you don’t need to keep trying. Not so easy in another way and that is it will cost you $299. Google sees Yahoo directory as somewhat of an authority. Your link will be valuable because of this.
Another important thing you can keep in mind with regard to linking is anchor text. Anchor text is the words that are actually linked to the hyperlink. Here’s an example: To download this product click here. The click here is the anchor text. If you did a search with Google using the words click here, you will find that that keyword points to Adobe Acrobat reader. The reason is that many sites point their user to this page to download acrobat reader for free as this is needed to read PDF files.
So the key to making use of anchor text is to anchor keywords you have optimized your site for. For example; if your site was optimized for the phrase “cheap reliable hosting” you would use the phrase as the hyperlinked text. This will give the link greater relevance to the search engines.
These are just a few of the many things you can do to increase your ranking with Google.
Filed under: SEO