The importance of incoming links in terms of search engine optimization (SEO) of your website or blog is undoubtedly one of the most important factors in achieving high rankings on the search engines. Incoming links, commonly referred to as backlinks, have often been hailed as the single factor that can determine a website’s ranking even without other relevant on-page and off-page optimization.
A typical example used by many SEO’s is in the search query ‘click here’. If you Google the words ‘click here’, the Adobe Acrobat download page comes up at number one on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) competing with some two billion other pages. However the words ‘click here’ does not feature anywhere within the content of this page. So what has made this specific page take the number one position on the SERP’s? Quite simply, the number of backlinks on millions of other websites with the anchor text ‘click here’ pointing to the download page this free document reader.
From link directories to blog comments and “purchased links”, SEO’s have been manipulating this ‘flaw’ in the search engine algorithm for the past few years. Backlinks are all the rage in SEO but the playing field is slowly changing where indiscriminate linking will no longer reap the desired effect. This is not to say that backlinks will not be one of the most important factors in coming years but the quality of the links are now being taken into consideration by the major search engines.
In order to undertake an effective SEO campaign, it is important to stick to the basics of link building.
Three simple strategies will determine the success of your link building campaign.
1. Anchor Text of Incoming Links
Select your anchor text carefully and ensure that you maintain the same keywords or phrases for the majority of the links. Variations of this anchor text and the use of appropriate long tail keywords can also be useful. However your main keyword(s) should be used most of the time.
If your anchor text is within the content of an article or blog post, ensure that the anchor text is optimized to be relevant to surrounding text. Whereas in the past, KEYWORDS and LINKS were the buzz words in SEO, these days it has changed to RELEVANCE. Relevant content. Relevant anchor text.
2. Reciprocal vs Triangular Linking
Reciprocal linking was a common practice in SEO for acquiring quality backlinks. In the past, webmasters would undertake a link exchange with partners sites where each would post a link to the other’s website. In other words, website A would post a link to website B and website B would return the favor by posting a link to website A. Search engines were quick to detect that this type of linking was intended to manipulate the system and reciprocal linking has now lost some of its value.
This quickly evolved into triangular linking. Website A would post a link to website B. Website B would post a link to website C and website C would then post a link to website A. Triangular linking is still very effective and many websites assist webmasters with this type of link exchange program. While the word triangular indicates that this is a three way exchange, in reality hundreds of website may be involved in this type of link exchange program which is often monitored by a central online service.
Some link exchange programs are free although most require a small fee for maintaining the incoming link with appropriate anchor text and content relevance.
3. URL Format in Incoming Links
A consistent format of your URL is essential in adding to your incoming link ‘account’. Different URL formats will be treated as different links by search engines. This simply means that ‘http://www.domain.com’ is not the same as ‘http”//domain.com’. Excluding the hypertext transfer protocol code (aka ‘http://’) from the URL format will also result in a different link.
As the internet continues to develop constantly, differences in coding, formats and other specifications has created a chaotic collection of online entities. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) attempts to maintain guidelines and specifications to ensure that all websites conform to a standard protocol. In order to comply with these standards, it is advisable to maintain your hyperlink in the format excluding the ‘www’ prefix. In other words, it is best to ensure that all your links are written as ‘http://domain.com’.
These three simple strategies in your link building campaign will ensure that your website or blog receives the full benefit of incoming links. Two other important points that is worth mentioning here is indiscriminate linking and natural backlinks. Both these topics may be a repetition of the points mentioned above but it is worth elaborating upon further.
Indiscriminate linking is essentially link spamming. Webmasters, bloggers and SEO’s attempt to increase the number of incoming links quickly by using automatic link building software, comment posting tools and purchasing link bundles from online traders. This type of link building is often a nuinsance to other websites and blogs and it does not credit your website with quality links. More importantly, this type of linking is often not RELEVANT. The website hosting your backlink may not be relevant to the content of your website. This may often lead to your website being penalized by the search engines.
Indiscriminate linking has led to two unethical SEO practices referred to as ‘Google bombing’ and ‘Google washing’ which can either prop a website to higher rankings or decimate it on the SERP’s. This will be further discussed in future posts on Organic SEO. Fortunately search engines link Google are undertaking steps to eradicate these practices and it is useful to read Matt Cutt’s blog post on Detecting Google Bombs.
Natural backlinks are those incoming links that form due to the strength of your content. If another website or blog finds your information interesting, relevant and useful to their readers, it is likely that they will post a link to your website, usually within the content of an article. This type of linking is hugely beneficial to your link building campaign as it is often emanating from RELEVANT websites and content. So how do you ‘inherit’ these natural backlinks? Just keep writing good content. Well structured content with good vocabulary, spelling and grammar. You content should be informative yet easy to read. Most importantly, your content should be truthful and accurate.