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Search Engine Articles
Improve the Link Popularity of
your site
By Sumantra Roy
Link popularity, i.e. the number of sites which are linking to your site, is an
increasingly important factor as far as search engine placement is concerned.
Other things remaining the same, more the number of links to your site, higher
will be its ranking.
What is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the
types of sites which are linking to you. A link from a site which is related to
yours is more valuable than a link from an unrelated site.
In this article, I explore different methods by which you can improve the link
popularity of your site. I start with the methods that you shouldn't bother
using, then go on to the moderately effective methods, and then end with the
most effective methods you can use to boost the link popularity of your site.
1) Submitting your site to Free For All (FFA) pages
A common misconception among many Internet marketers is that while FFA pages may
not directly bring in traffic to your site, it will help to improve the link
popularity of your site, and hence, will indirectly bring in traffic through the
search engines.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Most FFA pages can contain only a
certain number of links at a time. This means that when you submit your site to
a FFA page, your site will be placed at the top of the page. However, as more
and more people submit their sites to the FFA page, your site will be pushed
down, and finally, when it reaches the bottom of the page, it will be removed.
Now, since you can bet that plenty of other people are also submitting their
sites to the FFA pages, your site will remain in these pages for only a short
span of time. Hence, in order to ensure that the search engines see your site if
and when they come to spider the FFA page, you will need to ensure that you
submit your site to these FFA pages on a regular basis - at least once a week.
Even if you used an automatic submission program to do it, can you imagine a
worse way to spend your time and/or money? Furthermore, many search engines
recognize these pages which only contains links to other sites as FFA pages and
may completely ignore them. And while I haven't yet seen any evidence that
submitting to the FFA pages will actually penalize your site, there is every
possibility that this might happen in the future.
Hence, when it comes to FFA pages, my advice is simple: don't even think about
them.
2) Joining Reciprocal Link Services
Some people have recommended that in order to increase the link popularity of
your site, you can join some reciprocal link services. The basic idea behind
these services is that you add some pages to your site which contain links to
other sites which are members of that service, and in exchange, these members
will also add pages to their sites which will contain a link to your site.
Theoretically, more the members of that service, more your link popularity.
However, I have plenty of reservations about using this method to boost the link
popularity of your site:
i) Most of these services require that you add a visible graphical or text link
from your home page to the pages containing the links. If they require a
graphical link, it can completely destroy the general look and feel of your
site. Even if they require a text link, how would you feel if a visitor to your
site clicked on such a link and found one of your competitors (who is also a
member of this service) right at the top of a page?
ii) Most of these services give the same pages containing the links to each of
its members, i.e. the pages that you are required to upload to your site are
exactly the same as the pages which all the other members of that service are
required to upload to their servers. Even the file names of the pages tend to be
the same for all the members. Most search engines are now able to detect such
duplicate pages in different domains and may either ignore the pages or may even
penalize all these domains for spamming.
iii) Instead of linking only related sites with each other, most of these
services link all the members with each other. This means that lots of unrelated
sites will be linking to your site. As I mentioned before, links from unrelated
sites are simply not as valuable as links from related sites.
Hence, I don't recommend that you join any reciprocal link programs.
3) Exchanging links with other webmasters
Another way of improving the link popularity of your site is to exchange links
with other webmasters who have sites which are related to yours, but are not
direct competitors. Here's how you can do it:
First, open a database program like Microsoft Access and create a new table
containing fields like FirstName, LastName, Email Address, URL etc. Then, make a
list of the sites belonging to your competitors. Then, go to AltaVista, and type
in the following in the search box:
link:somesite.com -url:somesite.com
where somesite.com is the domain name of one of your competitors. This will give
you a list of all the sites which are linking to that competitor. Then, find out
in what context a particular site has linked to your competitor. If this site is
an affiliate of your competitor, then your chance of getting a link from this
site is limited, unless you offer an even better affiliate program. However, if
you find that this site has a Links page which contains links to other sites,
one of which is a link to your competitor, then it is an excellent prospect for
exchanging links. Find out the name and email address of the webmaster of the
site and add them to your database. In this way, go through all the sites which
are linking to your competitors, locate those sites which you think may want to
exchange links with you, and build up your database.
Once you have done that, create a Links page in your site, and add the URLs of
these sites to the Links page. Then, send an email to these webmasters,
introduce yourself and your site, congratulate them on building an excellent web
site, tell them that you have already added a link to their sites from yours,
and then ask them whether they would be kind enough to add a link to your site.
In your email, emphasize the fact that exchanging links in this way will be
mutually beneficial for both of you because it will help both of you drive
traffic to your sites. Wait for a month or so to see the response. Some
webmasters will agree to link to you. Others will simply not respond. After a
month, remove the links to those sites who are not interested in exchanging
links and using the methods outlined above, try to locate more sites with which
to exchange links.
When you send the email to the webmasters, make sure that you personalize each
email. Don't begin every email with "Hello Webmaster", begin with
"Hello Mike". If you want, you can use email merge programs to
automatically personalize each email. You can check out some email merge
programs by going to http://download.cnet.com and searching for "email
merge" (without the quotes).
Another thing that you can do is to mention in your Links page that you are
willing to exchange links with other web sites. This allows other webmasters who
come to your web site to propose a link exchange.
4) Starting an Awards Program
A moderately effective method of improving the link popularity of your site is
to start an awards program. You can have web sites which are related to yours
apply for an award from your site. The sites which win the award get the chance
to display the logo for your award. This logo is linked to your site, preferably
to a page which contains more information on the award.
If you publish a newsletter, consider declaring the winners in your newsletter.
You can also perform a review of the winners' sites in your newsletter. This
adds useful content to your newsletter and also gives more webmasters the
incentive to apply for your award, since you may review their sites in your
newsletter. This also gives them the incentive to subscribe to your newsletter
to see if they win the award.
Make sure that you give awards to only those sites which deserve to win. If you
give your award to sites which don't deserve it, your award will have little
credibility, which will, in turn, hurt the credibility of your company.
Furthermore, make sure that the logo you design for the award looks
professional. If it doesn't, not many webmasters will want to display it in
their sites.
5) Giving testimonials
This may sound a bit unusual, but giving testimonials for products or services
which you find useful can be another moderately effective way of improving the
link popularity of your site. If you really like a product, simply write to the
company and tell them why you liked the product so much and how it has helped
you. Chances are, the company will write back to you to thank you for your
comments and will ask you for permission to display your comments in their web
site. Tell the company that you have no problems if they publish your comments,
but request them to add a link to your site along with the testimonial. There is
every possibility that the company will agree since publishing the URL of your
web site gives more credibility to the testimonial.
Of course, please don't go about giving testimonials to every company you can
locate just because it will improve your link popularity :-)
6) Posting to Message Boards and Discussion Lists
Another moderately effective method of increasing the link popularity of your
site is to post to online message boards. At the end of every message that you
post, you can sign off by mentioning your name and the URL of your web site. If
the message board allows it, you can even include a short promotional blurb
about your site at the end of your posts. However, make sure that the individual
messages that are posted to that message board are archived in static HTML pages
(i.e. the URLs for the individual messages should not contain a "?").
Otherwise, the search engines will consider these pages to be dynamic pages and
may not spider these pages and hence, will not be able to find your link.
Email based discussion lists which are archived on the web in static HTML pages
can also be used to boost the link popularity of your site in a similar manner.
In this case, the signature file that you use with your email program should
contain the URL for your web site.
7) Starting a Link Contest
A good method of improving the link popularity of your site is to give away
prizes to other webmasters if they link to you. The prizes that you give out
should ideally be something which other webmasters will find valuable enough to
want to link to you, but which do not cost you too much. For instance, if you
publish a newsletter, and have unsold ad inventory, you can give away some free
advertisements in your newsletter to the winners. If you sell a software (or an
ebook), you can give away a free copy of your software or ebook to the winners,
since it doesn't cost you anything to produce an additional copy of digital
goods like software and ebooks.
Link contests work best if you run the contest on a continuous basis and if you
declare new winners frequently. If you run the contest for a few months, and
then stop it, the webmasters who had linked to you will all remove their links.
However, if you run it on a continuous basis, and declare new winners every
month or so, the webmasters will have the incentive to keep their links to your
site.
Also, make sure that you require all participants to have a link to your site
either in their home page, or in an internal page of their site which is linked
to their home page. Also ensure that the page which contains the link is no more
than two levels deep from their home page (i.e. it should not take more than two
clicks to go from the home page to the page containing the link). If they don't
do this, the search engine spiders may not index the page which contains the
link to your site, and hence, may not find your link.
8) Writing articles and allowing them to be re-published
This is by far one of the best ways of improving the link popularity of your
site, and one of my favorites. Whenever I write an article on search engine
placement, I first publish it in my newsletter and then I publish the article in
my site as a separate web page. I also submit it to the following article
submission sites:
http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.html http://www.ideamarketers.com http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
Many webmasters and ezine publishers frequent these article directories in
search of articles. Submitting my articles to these directories gives them the
opportunity of re-publishing my articles. While I have had some success with
each of the above directories, by far the best among them is the
ezinearticles.com directory.
Now, at the end of each article, I mention that people are free to re-publish
the article as long as they include my resource box (i.e. my bio) at the end of
the article. I always include the URL of my site in the resource box. This means
that whenever someone publishes one of my articles in his/her web site, I have
another site linking to my site. Also, many ezine publishers archive their
ezines in their web sites. If they have re-published my article in a particular
issue, I again get a link.
Writing articles is also an excellent viral marketing tool. As some webmasters
and ezine publishers publish my articles, other webmasters and ezine publishers
will read my article. Some of them, in turn, will publish my article, which will
again be read by other webmasters and ezine publishers, some of whom will
publish it... and so on.
Also, since only web sites related to mine would be interested in publishing my
articles, all these links tend to come from related sites, which, as I mentioned
earlier, are more valuable than links from unrelated sites.
Writing articles, of course, has another very important benefit - if you write
good articles, it makes you known as an expert in your field. This helps to
improve your credibility, which makes people more comfortable about buying your
products or services.
Some notes about writing articles:
i) I have learnt through experience that some webmasters will publish other
people's articles and will display the complete resource box but will not link
to the URL mentioned in the resource box. In order to prevent this, you need to
explicitly state that the article can be published only if the URL mentioned in
the resource box is linked to your site.
ii) Your resource box should not be too long - it should be no more than 6 lines
long, formatted at 65 characters per line. Otherwise, other webmasters and ezine
publishers will hesitate to publish your article.
9) Starting your own affiliate program
This is another excellent way by which you can improve the link popularity of
your site. When you have your own affiliate program, you give other webmasters
the incentive to link to you. In this case too, since most of these web sites
will be related to the industry in which you are operating, these links will be
more valuable than links from unrelated sites.
Now, when you start your affiliate program, you need to decide whether you want
to run the program yourself, or whether you want to outsource it from a third
party. While outsourcing your affiliate program has a number of benefits, doing
so will not help you improve the link popularity of your site, because
affiliates are going to link to the third party's site. In order to improve the
link popularity of your site, you need to ensure that the affiliate links are
pointing to your domain.
The affiliate program software that I highly recommend and have used for the
affiliate program of our search engine positioning services is Kowabunga
Technologies' My Affiliate Program. Although this software is hosted in a domain
owned by Kowabunga Technologies, they give you the option of having the
affiliate links pointing to your own domain.
10) Submitting to the directories
This is by far the most important step as far as improving the link popularity
of your site is concerned. As I mentioned before, what is important is not only
the number of links to your site, but also the quality of the links to your
site. No links are as important as links from some of the major directories like
Yahoo!, the Open Directory etc. However, Yahoo! currently requires a payment of
$299 per year in order to list any commercial site. Paying them $299 per year
just to improve your link popularity is probably not cost effective. But, the
Open Directory is free, and you should definitely get your site listed in the
Open Directory.
Also, you should submit your site to as many of the smaller directories as
possible. You can get a list of such directories here.
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This article may be re-published as long as the following resource box is
included at the end of the article and as long as you link to the email address
and the URL mentioned in the resource box:
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected and recognized
search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. For more articles on
search engine placement, subscribe to his 1st Search Ranking Newsletter by
sending a blank email to mailto:1stSearchRanking.999.99@optinpro.com or by going
to http://www.1stSearchRanking.net
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