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Link Building for Successful Search Engine Marketing
Link Building: Search Engine Marketing Search Result Relevance
Popularity Reciprocal Link Farm
Link Building (links to your web pages from relevant external sources,
i.e. related web sites, blogs, news or "wiki" articles, press releases) is currently
one of the most important factors weighed by the major search engines
to determine search result rankings.
Below are a few of our observations on the current relevance and
importance of a well-implemented link building program to a successful Search Engine
Marketing (SEM) program.
Link Building: Effective Advanced Search Engine Optimization
According to an article by Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of
SearchEngineWatch.com, and guest writers Robin Nobles, Eric Ward, and
John Alexander, "In search engine optimization, 'off page' factors have become more and more important as they relate to rankings. In particular,
solid link popularity can literally make or break a site with the search engines."
Effective link building can be a complex, time-consuming project that
can damage your web site's rankings if not executed properly.
A
comprehensive understanding of the principles of effective, legitimate
link building strategies, and how to avoid practices that can get your site
banned from the search engines is essential to the success of a link
building campaign.
Link Building: Helps Get High Ranking From Link Popularity
Link popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your web
site from other sites. Based on current trends, link popularity now appears to be
as important to get high rankings as well-written
keyword and description meta-tags.
- The quality of incoming links is
as important as the quantity of sites that link back
to yours. The relevance of sites that links to yours creates more value
to the search engines than sheer numbers of unrelated sites.
- A single highly-relevant link has more impact and positive
affect than a dozen reciprocal irrelevant links from a
link farm and other
questionable sites that provide no related services. An example of a
high-quality link is one to a restaurant's web
site from a local newspaper's regularly published online review of
local dining establishments.
Link Farms: They Only Grow Spam
A link farm is a web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites,
often of unrelated topics.
The original idea behind link farms was to
increase the number of sites that link to yours because search
engines such as Google ranked sites according to the quality and quantity of sites that link to yours
(see Understanding PageRank,
below,) among other things.
The theory was that the more sites linked to yours, the higher
your ranking in the search engine results
because more links indicated a higher level of user
popularity.
However, search engines now consider link farming as a form of spam and have
adjusted their algorithms to identify and banish link
farm sites, so the term link farming has garnered negative connotations across the Internet.
A number of proven methods exist to develop a strong link building
program. Learn more:
Click Here
for Link Building
Tips - The Dos and Don'ts.
Link Building: Understanding PageRank
PageRank™ is the system Google
employs to assign measure of importance to a web page on
a scale of 1 to 10.
According to Google:
- PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web
by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an
individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a
link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for
page B
- Google looks at more than volume of votes/links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts
the vote
- Votes cast by pages that are themselves
"important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages
"important"
Important, high-quality sites receive a
higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it
conducts a search. However, with their more advanced webbot
spider programs, important pages mean nothing
to you if they don't match a search query.
- Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to
find pages that are both important and relevant to a search
- Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on
a page and examines all aspects of the page's content
(and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a
good match for a query
Link Baiting: Advanced Link Building Strategies
Link baiting (or linkbaiting) is a relatively new SEO technique and
is rapidly becoming the preferred way to build links naturally.
However, a good link baiting program is a highly time consuming
process when performed correctly. Most businesspeople would find it
nearly impossible to devote the time needed to do the job properly
without outside assistance.
- Linkbaiting employs methods that naturally attract backlinks to your web page.
It's a combination of online publicity, public relations and link
building
- Also known as social bookmarking, viral linking, digging and
shadowing, link baiting can attract a lot of attention when done properly
The process starts by developing and posting new content (for
example, write an article and have it posted on
Wikipedia.org), then getting other people to talk about it:
- Discussing it on forums
- Blogging about it
- Posting it on del.icio.us / Furl / Digg / Shoutwire
- Linking to it from their sites
Link Building: Successful Implementation Yields Visible Return on Investment (ROI)
As an ongoing part of a full SEM program, optimization of a web site
is just the first step. Once you have established an initial presence on
the web, a full link building campaign will maximize your site's potential and yield
a high return on your marketing investment (ROI) dollars.
DRIVE can help develop a complete Search Engine Marketing
program from the ground up, redesign and reformat an existing web site
for SEO, or develop a link building program for an existing SEO site.
Give us a call today and learn how effective the power of the internet can
be for your business.
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DRIVE provides specialized on-line and
off-line search engine / internet marketing services and collateral to
small businesses, mid-size companies, manufacturers, and creative
agencies in Indianapolis, Central Indiana and throughout the Midwest.
To DRIVE more business, call 877-993-4435, or
send us an email, or submit the short form below:
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