Finding Links

Okay, so you understand that links are important, but how do you find them?

The first step to finding links is posting to relevant directories. Note the term ‘relevant’. This does not mean posting to every directory you can find, but posting to directories that a) potential customers may actually visit and b) have decent page ranks. Without a decent page rank, your link will be essentially useless.

One of the best ways to find relevant directories is to visit DMOZ, click on Reference, then click on Directories. From here, you can review the list of directories and determine which are relevant to your site.

When searching for relevant sites its easiest to ask for link exchanges. One way link building is far more difficult than two way, and if you have a resources page I recommend using it to gain link exchanges. Links posted on your resources page should not only help with link exchanges, but they should also be potentially useful to your customers.

One of the best ways to find link partners is to type ‘add url (keyword phrase)’ into a search engine. Results will list directories and potential partners. Also, just typing the keyword phrase into a search engine will list relevant sites. Visit the sites, determine if they have a resources page, and request a one way link. If they request an exchange, provide it for them. Remember, you should only be interested in having your link placed on a page with PR 3 or more (not the home page).

Link building can be an extensive process that takes tens if not hundreds of hours, and you may want to consider hiring professional SEO services to complete this task for you. Many SEO companies specialize in link building; however, before hiring any company you should ask these questions:

1) Do you submit to Search engines (a ‘yes’ is a clear sign of an incompetent SEO)

2) How many directories do you submit to (Anything above 50 is outrageous. Some would argue that anything above 5 is unnecessary.)

3) What type of sites will you get links from (you’re looking for relevant sites)

4) What page rank will these sites have (you’re looking for PR 3 or more, although I sometimes go down to PR 2)

Link Building and Why it’s important

Okay,

So now you’ve got your site ready to go: you’ve developed META information, created an excellent internal linking web, and written compelling and optimized SEO copy; however, you’re still missing a key component to Search Engine Optimization - External Links.

External links differ from internal links because they originate outside of your site.  Search engines view external links as a ‘vote’ for your site, meaning another website trusts yours enough to post a link to your site on theirs.  That means a lot to search engines, and the higher ranked the sites that link to you, the more credibility your site will have.

You hear a lot of SEO’s talking about the fabled .edu link, which allegedly performs SEO magic to your site.  It’s true that .edu links are highly regarded as link gold because .edu sites are considered the ‘most reliable’ of all sites on the internet, unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to obtain the SEO links, as your site must generally benefit college students in some way, and few do.  So don’t spend too many hours searching for that link - chances are, unless you have a relevant site, you won’t find it.  .Org links come next in the heirarchy, followed by everything else (.com, .net, etc.). 

Essentially, there are two types of external links: one way links and reciprocal links.  A one-way link is a link comes from a site you do not link to, a reciprocal link comes from a site you do link to.  Reciprocal links are often part of an exchange, in which you promise to post a link in exchange for the posting of your own link on another site.  

While building links to your site you want to keep in mind that higher ranked pages are viewed as more credible in the eyes of search engines, and unindexed pages (pages that carry no page rank) are rarely viewed by search engines and carry little or no value.

I’ll discuss the process of obtaining links in the next post.

Geoffrey Hoesch is the owner of Dragonfly Professional SEO services, a Baltimore based Search Engine Optimization Company.

Internal Linking

Once you’ve developed all your SEO friendly content it’s time to create some internal linking within your site (this may also be done as your writing your site’s content).

Internal Linking refers to any link contained on your site that points to another page on your site, and it is a good way to help users and search spiders navigate through your site.  Internal linking is is probably the best way to get relevant anchor text links pointing to your pages.

The main purpose of internal linking is to pass ‘link juice’ throughout your site.  Link juice refers to the amount of search engine recognition your site has.  Inbound links are like referrals from other webmasters, basically saying, “we trust this site enough to post a link on our site.”  As in life, the more referrals you have the more reliable your business will appear.  So, link juice is the search engine’s way of measuring your site’s reliability.

A superficial way to measure link juice is to check a page’s Page Rank.  To do so, you can download Google’s toolbar.  Pages with higher Page Ranks pass more link juice than those with lower page ranks.

Passing link juice from one page to another and developing an effective linking structure is truly an art, and the larger your site the more difficult the process becomes.   The general rule I follow is to add 2 or 3 internal links per page of copy.   These internal links should use specific anchor text link to refer to the page to which they are pointing.  For example, this link: professional seo services, leads to my website.  The text within the link, ‘professional seo services’, is the anchor text.  Since you’ve already optimized each page for SEO, you have two or three relevant keyword phrases for each page.  Use these phrases in your anchor text when linking to that page.

If you add new pages to your site and want to ‘juice’ them (get them indexed and ranked quickly), then you can add a link to that page on some of your higher ranking pages.  This will ensure that the page is crawled by spiders and indexed in search engines.

The Importance of a Blog

As an SEO specialist, I have an interest in many aspects of Social Media Optimization, and I recommend to each of my clients that they develop a blog. A blog serves several purposes, it provides your visitors with vital information regarding your industry, it helps establish your authority in a particular industry, it brings additional visitors to your site, and it helps you develop relevant anchor text links, which are vital for SEO.

To those interested in developing a Blog, I recommend using WordPress - of all do-it-yourself Blog services, WordPress seems to be the most SEO friendly and it is fairly straightforward.

Some important things to remember when developing your blog are: stick with relevant posts, write posts that visitors will find interesting, include 3-5 anchor text links (that is, after all, one of the purposes of your blog), and always include tags, which let Blog surfers know what your site is all about.

For professional SEO services, please visit our website. If you have any questions regarding this blog, feel free to post a comment.

Creating SEO-friendly Content

A frequently used SEO phrase is “Content is King.”  This refers to the importance of good content on your site; after all, it doesn’t matter how many people you bring to your site through SEO tactics if none of them are willing to hear what you have to say.

It’s important to remember when developing your SEO content that the first rule is to develop user-friendly content that site visitors will actually want to read.

If you’re not a great writer, you may want to consider hiring a professional copywriter to develop your content.

General Rules for SEO content creation:

1)  Optimize for 2-3 keyword phrases, not just one.  Also, make sure you’re optimized for phrases, not single keywords.

2) Make sure you use the EXACT phrase numerous times in your writing.  If you’re optimizing for the phrase “used cars Denver” use the phrase “used cars Denver” as often as possible.  However, where the keyword phrase is inappropriate, you can use portions of the keyword phrase, such as “used”, “cars”, or “Denver”.

3)  Keyword densities should be between 3-5%.  Although some recommend higher density rates, over 5% density you run the risk of awkward, obviously SEO optimized content.  To check keyword density, try Webmaster Toolkit’s keyword density analyzer.

4)  When appropriate, include keyword phrases in H1 and H2 Coding.

Always keep your target audience in mind when writing your content, and write compelling material that moves visitors toward your goal, whether that be to sell a product or to provide services.

For professional seo services, please visit Dragonfly SEO.

Composing a Keyword Phrase List

In order to better organize your search engine optimization campaign, its a good idea to develop an extensive keyword phrase list that will serve as a foundation for the SEO process.

Useful SEO Plugins, Resources, and Newsletters

Before beginning any keyword research or link building for your site, its a good idea to familiarize yourself with a few SEO resources.

Plugins:

I use Firefox as my web browser and recommend that others do the same. Here are a few SEO friends Plugins I’ve picked up along the way:

Optimizing your Title and META Tags

Don’t be frightened by the weird ‘techie’ name, although META Tags are part of HTML coding, they are easy to understand.

In the past, professional SEO services were primarily concerned with three aspects of the <head> portion of a website, these were: Title, keywords, and description. Now SEO is primarily concerned with only three: Title and description. Some claim that the keywords META tag has fallen out of favor on most search engines and will not help increase your site’s ranking. I tend to believe that its best to cover all your bases, and, assuming search engines still place some value on the keywords META, it can’t hurt your site to include keywords. Also, since SEO is in a constant state of flux, it’s possible the keywords META tag will one day be favored by Search Engines. Who knows.

Keyword Phrase Research

Some aspects of keyword phrase research were covered in an earlier SEO article entitled Getting Started. I recommend reading that article before you read this one, as it provides a cursory introduction to Keyword Phrase research.

Because you’ve reached web page creation, a critical point in the development of your website, you should do what you’ll almost always do when you reach a new stage of SEO development — you’re going to conduct some keyword phrase research.

Before you Write your SEO Pages

Before you write your SEO copy and after you’ve conducted your keyword phrase research it is a good idea to develop the basic framework for your site. This will help you stay organized and also help you to avoid confusion during the process of internal linking (creating text links that link to other pages within your site). Internal linking is beneficial for SEO and it also adds flow to your website.