Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Using Links For Search Engine Advantage

By Lucas Heijn

Google as well as other major search engines such as yahoo and MSN all look at how many links your site has in order to determine its importance. This is also what determines your ranking.

Not all links have an equal value. What determines the value of the link is its relevancy to the page it is linked to. The more relevant the page is the greater the value of the link. If not just the page, but the whole site is relevant the link is even more valuable.

Here are some methods you can use to create links to your site.

Reciprocal Links.

Once upon a time they were considered very good, today they don't have the value they once did but they are still useful. It is important that the links you get in this way are very relevant to the content in your site. This way reciprocal links will still increase your ranking.

Writing Articles

This is one of the best ways of creating links back to your site. This can have a viral effect as webmasters take up your article and post it on their site or send it out in a newsletter. Articles you submit must have a link back to your site. Most article directories allow you to place a link in your bio section. There are hundreds of these article directories that you can post to. Here are some you must make sure to include: EzineArticles.com, ArticleCity.com, and GoArticles.com.

Link Farms

A link farm is a site with scrolling pages of endless links. They allow you to place your link there no strings attached. If you come across one run the other way. They are considered part of a spammer's network. Linking to these sites can actually damage your ranking. Google will downgrade your links and your page rank.

Directories

Links from directories can help significantly. Directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo and other reputable directories can greatly help you in your rankings. If you can get your site into DMOZ you will reap the benefits. The difficulty is getting it included. Search for the best category and submit your site every 4 - 6 months until you are listed.

With Yahoo it is easier to list your site but it will cost you. Yahoo charges $299 per year to list your site. The listing can be very valuable as Google looks at Yahoo directory as an authority.

Another important thing you can keep in mind with regard to linking is anchor text. Anchor text is the words that are actually linked to the hyperlink. Here's an example: To download this product click here. The click here is the anchor text. If you did a search with Google using the words click here, you will find that that keyword points to Adobe Acrobat reader. The reason is that many sites point their user to this page to download acrobat reader for free as this is needed to read PDF files.

So now when you use anchor text be sure to use keywords you are optimizing your site for. So even though "click Here" is appropriate at times, try to use your keywords as this will greatly increase the value of the link.

These are just a few of the many things you can do to increase your ranking with Google.

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