The Back Link Controversy - How To Get The Most Out Of Your Links
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Tags: internet marketing, link strategies, SEO, Web Design, web design south africa, website design, website design south africa
If you have been in the business of Internet Marketing or trying to promote a website then you will certainly have heard of back links and the importance of these links.
A lot has been said and written about this topic and there is controversy as to what the best links are and how one should go about getting these links. Many people believe that all they need to do is to get as many links back to their website as possible and that it will help in Seach Engine Rankings.
What these people typically set out to do is to go to link exchanges. There they submit their site’s details and invite people to link to that site. The problem here is that with a link exchange, you are also obliged to link back to the site that is linking to you. Search engines can quickly pick this up and they attach very little value to those types of links.
A further problem with this type of strategy is that often sites that are totally unrelated to the theme of your website link back to you. Search engines see those links as irrelevant and will once again attach very little value to such links.
To avoid this problem, many link exchanges have created categories so that you only link to sites that fall more or less in the same category as yours and of course they do the same for you. This is an improvement, but on the other hand you are once again stuck with the fact that these links are reciprocal and the search engines can pick them up.
Other link exchanges have come up with the concept of three way linking. This means that A links to B, B links to C and C links back to A. In this way each party gets one back link and the links are not reciprocal. This is a much improved system, but once again search engines and especially Google know who these link exchanges are and they are on the lookout for links from those sites. These links do however carry more weight than just straight reciprocal linking.
One good way of obtaining links is by using business directories. These are usually free directories where you can list your business in a matching category and give your website’s details. These links enjoy more prestige than the previous ones mentioned, if the business directory is of course a reputable directory.
One shortfall of these business directories is that they often don’t allow anchor text, but only a website address. Anchor text is extremely important in linking and you should always make sure that you use the right anchor text. Anchor text is a keyword or keywords you use to promote your type of business.
So for example if you have a web design business, you should use anchor text like web design in the link, or website design, or something similar. To help you decide on anchor text think of words or phrases you would use to search for your type of business if you were to do a Google search. One cannot underestimate the value of the correct anchor text.
A perfect example of the importance of anchor text was discovered a few years ago, when someone did a Google search for Click here. What was the number 1 ranked result? Adobe Reader! The phrase itself has nothing to do with Adobe Reader, but yet that is the no. 1 rank website in Google for that phrase?
Why is that? Well, there are thousands if not millions of websites where some or other document can be downloaded in PDF. On many of those websites, you will find a disclaimer such as ‘You need Adobe Reader to view this document. If you do not have Adobe Reader, click here“. And then the link for this text is to the Adobe Reader website! See the importance of the correct anchor text?
So, if you are submitting your website to a business directory, try to include some relevant anchor text in the link to your website if possible.
Finally we come to the most important type of back link, the generic link. This type of link is simply a link from a website that is in the same business as yours that found your website to be so interesting or valuable that they decided to link to your website. If this website has a high Google ranking, it is seen as an authority site and one link from such a website will mean more than 100 from other lesser websites.
Don’t however forget that more and more people are blogging and the search engines are giving more and more value to links from blogs. My Article Network is one such service, where people can submit their links to other blogs. This is a totally natural and random process and will also help a lot.
We recently conducted an experiment using My Article Network, where we submitted regular articles in a competitive niche, using My Article Network. The website we were doing this for, was listed on page 32 of the Google Rankings.
We kept on submitting articles with backlinks using anchor text relevant to the site’s core business. After two weeks the site had moved up to page 23 in the generic rankings and just over two months later, the site is already on page 5!
Trust me when I say that submitting articles to blogs definitely helps with links.
Well, there you have it, a short summary of a topic that could fill a whole book. Start working on a link strategy today and see how your website climbs the Google rankings.
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design