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Author: Daria Goetsch Article source: http://www.addme.com/. Used with author's permission.
One-way link building is a great way to improve your link
popularity and ranking in the search engines. One-way links
are more difficult to obtain than traditional reciprocal
links, but pay off in securing solid long-term search engine
ranking results.
Why Are One-Way Links Helpful?
Link building in general is an important part of making sure
your site ranks well in the search engines. Google and many
of the other search engines include link popularity as part
of the way they evaluate the web pages they include in the
search engine databases. Links are seen as a positive "vote"
towards the quality of the web page. Each individual page
acquires link popularity based on the pages that link to it.
Google and Yahoo both have toolbars showing the page rank of
pages you visit, so you can use these tools to get a good
estimate of your pages' link popularity. It is not necessary
to get totally caught up in the minutia of which types of
links from which types of pages are the most important. The
bottom line is this: acquiring links pointing back to your
website, particularly links from sites covering the same or
related topics as your site, is helpful in the overall
scheme of search engine ranking.
The big "plus" of one-way links is that you don't have to
worry about linking back to a "bad neighborhood". If your
site has links pointing back to sites that serve as "link
farms" or "free-for-all" sites, you may not gain, and could
actually lose page rank. These sites are rarely focused, and
tend to have links to and from all different sorts of sites.
Since there is no particular topical emphasis here, it is
clear to Google and the other search engines that the sole
purpose of these sites is to artificially increase the
number of links pointing to your site. Since there is no
value added for the search engine's users, they in turn give
no value to these links.
Another advantage to these focused, one-way links is that
they will tend to stay in place. A website that features a
link to your site probably does so because that site's owner
thinks that their visitors will benefit from the content
your site has to offer. Rather than simply trying to
manipulate search results, they want to add to the
experience of their visitors; you benefit from having a long
term link in place. Sites featuring reciprocal links may
simply drop your link when it no longer suits their linking
strategy.
How Do I Obtain Natural Links?
Building good content helps interest your visitors and keeps
them on your website. By becoming an authority on your
topic, you will attract more visitors. When another website
in essence "votes" for the quality of your website by
placing a link pointing back to it, you are obtaining
natural linking. The more you can build upon helpful
articles, FAQs and white papers, etc., the better reason for
visitors to link back to your website because of the quality
content.
One-Way Linking Sources
There are a number of ways to get links from other sites
back to yours. The most important principle to keep in mind
is that you will get the most links when you offer something
significant to link to. Think of what you can provide that
people will want to link to:
* Natural links given from topic-related websites that like
your website
* Providing free content, such as access to articles,
e-books, FAQ's and white papers
* Directory links, listed under the category related to your
topic
* Business directory links, listed under the category
related to your topic
* Blogs, submitted to a blog directory and archived online
* Business associations, listed under the category related
to your topic
* Newsletter text ads promoting your business, archived
online at topic-related websites
* Original articles, submitted to and archived online at
topic-related websites
* Original press releases, submitted to and archived online
at topic-related websites
* Original newsletters, submitted to and archived online at
topic-related websites
* White papers, submitted to and archived online at
topic-related websites
* E-books, submitted to and archived online at topic-related
websites
* Free software tools provided with required link back to
website
For each of these types of content, you will want to have an
active link pointing back to your site. Of course, when
creating your own original content, always archive your own
work on your website to build your content and increase your
own link popularity by growing the number of pages on your
website.
The extra value of one-way links is the fact that you are
also promoting your website from the listing as well as the
active link. Articles, newsletters, white papers, directory
and business association links may bring in traffic from
visitors who are interested in the description of your
website listing.
How Do I Know The Links Are Valid?
To gain the most benefit from your links, the link back to
your web page should be one that can be followed by the
search engine robots. Plain old text links and image links
usually can be followed by the search engine robots. More
exotic types of links, like JavaScript links, cannot
typically be followed by the search engine robots. When you
provide suggested linking code, the simpler the better.
Don't be afraid to suggest linking formats to owners of
sites that link to you. The types of links that serve your
purposes best will generally provide their visitors with the
best experience as well.
Check to see if the page where the link will be located can
be found in the search engine results. You can search via
the entire website or by individual page. Different search
engines use different syntax in looking for individual pages
and links; refer to the advanced search function for each
search engine for details.
Google Search Example:
Shows indexing of all pages listed in website
site:www.websitedomainname.com
Shows indexing of a specific web page in website
info:www.websitedomainname.com/pagename.html
If the page is listed in the search engine results, this
means the page has been indexed by the search engine robots.
This means the web page is valid for indexing and that your
link will be picked up as well.
Research And Quality Content Equal Success
One-way link building means hard work and long term
determination to achieve good link popularity. By improving
the quality of your website, you improve the chance to
obtain good quality natural links. Spend a set amount of
time each week to seek out quality one-way links to achieve
your goal. By using this long-term game plan you will be
able to safely build links for optimum link popularity
success. Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Optimization company serving small businesses. She has specialized in Search Engine Promotion since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O'Reilly Media, Inc., a technical book publishing company.
Copyright © 2002-2005 Search Innovation Marketing.
http://www.searchinnovation.com All Rights Reserved.
Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without editing, including the bio information. Please include a hyperlink to http://www.searchinnovation.com when using this article in newsletters or online.
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