Improve the link popularity of your site.
By Sumantra Roy
Link popularity, i.e. the number of sites which are linking to
your site, is an increasingly important factor as far as search
engine placement is concerned. Other things remaining the same,
more the number of links to your site, higher will be its ranking.
What is important is not only the number of links to your site,
but also the types of sites which are linking to you. A link from
a site which is related to yours is more valuable than a link
from an unrelated site.
In this article, I explore different methods by which you can
improve the link popularity of your site. I start with the methods
that you shouldn't bother using, then go on to the moderately
effective methods, and then end with the most effective methods
you can use to boost the link popularity of your site.
1) Submitting your site to Free For All (FFA) pages
A common misconception among many Internet marketers is that while
FFA pages may not directly bring in traffic to your site, it will
help to improve the link popularity of your site, and hence, will
indirectly bring in traffic through the search engines.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Most FFA pages can contain
only a certain number of links at a time. This means that when
you submit your site to a FFA page, your site will be placed at
the top of the page. However, as more and more people submit their
sites to the FFA page, your site will be pushed down, and finally,
when it reaches the bottom of the page, it will be removed.
Now, since you can bet that plenty of other people are also submitting
their sites to the FFA pages, your site will remain in these pages
for only a short span of time. Hence, in order to ensure that
the search engines see your site if and when they come to spider
the FFA page, you will need to ensure that you submit your site
to these FFA pages on a regular basis - at least once a week.
Even if you used an automatic submission program to do it, can
you imagine a worse way to spend your time and/or money? Furthermore,
many search engines recognize these pages which only contains
links to other sites as FFA pages and may completely ignore them.
And while I haven't yet seen any evidence that submitting to the
FFA pages will actually penalize your site, there is every possibility
that this might happen in the future.
Hence, when it comes to FFA pages, my advice is simple: don't
even think about them.
2) Joining Reciprocal Link Services
Some people have recommended that in order to increase the link
popularity of your site, you can join some reciprocal link services.
The basic idea behind these services is that you add some pages
to your site which contain links to other sites which are members
of that service, and in exchange, these members will also add
pages to their sites which will contain a link to your site. Theoretically,
more the members of that service, more your link popularity.
However, I have plenty of reservations about using this method
to boost the link popularity of your site:
i) Most of these services require that you add a visible graphical
or text link from your home page to the pages containing the links.
If they require a graphical link, it can completely destroy the
general look and feel of your site. Even if they require a text
link, how would you feel if a visitor to your site clicked on
such a link and found one of your competitors (who is also a member
of this service) right at the top of a page?
ii) Most of these services give the same pages containing the
links to each of its members, i.e. the pages that you are required
to upload to your site are exactly the same as the pages which
all the other members of that service are required to upload to
their servers. Even the file names of the pages tend to be the
same for all the members. Most search engines are now able to
detect such duplicate pages in different domains and may either
ignore the pages or may even penalize all these domains for spamming.
iii) Instead of linking only related sites with each other, most
of these services link all the members with each other. This means
that lots of unrelated sites will be linking to your site. As
I mentioned before, links from unrelated sites are simply not
as valuable as links from related sites.
Hence, I don't recommend that you join any reciprocal link programs.
3) Exchanging links with other webmasters
Another way of improving the link popularity of your site is to
exchange links with other webmasters who have sites which are
related to yours, but are not direct competitors. Here's how you
can do it:
First, open a database program like Microsoft Access and create
a new table containing fields like FirstName, LastName, Email
Address, URL etc. Then, make a list of the sites belonging to
your competitors. Then, go to AltaVista, and type in the following
in the search box:
link:somesite.com -url:somesite.com
where somesite.com is the domain name of one of your competitors.
This will give you a list of all the sites which are linking to
that competitor. Then, find out in what context a particular site
has linked to your competitor. If this site is an affiliate of
your competitor, then your chance of getting a link from this
site is limited, unless you offer an even better affiliate program.
However, if you find that this site has a Links page which contains
links to other sites, one of which is a link to your competitor,
then it is an excellent prospect for exchanging links. Find out
the name and email address of the webmaster of the site and add
them to your database. In this way, go through all the sites which
are linking to your competitors, locate those sites which you
think may want to exchange links with you, and build up your database.
Once you have done that, create a Links page in your site, and
add the URLs of these sites to the Links page. Then, send an email
to these webmasters, introduce yourself and your site, congratulate
them on building an excellent web site, tell them that you have
already added a link to their sites from yours, and then ask them
whether they would be kind enough to add a link to your site.
In your email, emphasize the fact that exchanging links in this
way will be mutually beneficial for both of you because it will
help both of you drive traffic to your sites. Wait for a month
or so to see the response. Some webmasters will agree to link
to you. Others will simply not respond. After a month, remove
the links to those sites who are not interested in exchanging
links and using the methods outlined above, try to locate more
sites with which to exchange links.
When you send the email to the webmasters, make sure that you
personalize each email. Don't begin every email with "Hello
Webmaster", begin with "Hello Mike". If you want,
you can use email merge programs to automatically personalize
each email. You can check out some email merge programs by going
to http://download.cnet.com and searching for "email merge"
(without the quotes).
The main problem with this method of improving the link popularity
of your site is that it takes a lot of time. You may find that
the number of links you manage to get just does not justify the
time that you spend over it. The best way to automate the whole
process is to use a program called Zeus. Zeus will allow you to
locate and exchange links with sites that are related to yours
and manage those links on an ongoing basis in a fraction of the
time it would take for you to do it manually. You can download
a free trial version of Zeus here.
While the program does take a while to get used to, the results
that you can obtain with it are simply phenomenal. I highly recommend
that you download the free trial version and try it out.
Another thing that you can do is to mention in your Links page
that you are willing to exchange links with other web sites. This
allows other webmasters who come to your web site to propose a
link exchange.
4) Starting an Awards Program
A moderately effective method of improving the link popularity
of your site is to start an awards program. You can have web sites
which are related to yours apply for an award from your site.
The sites which win the award get the chance to display the logo
for your award. This logo is linked to your site, preferably to
a page which contains more information on the award.
If you publish a newsletter, consider declaring the winners in
your newsletter. You can also perform a review of the winners'
sites in your newsletter. This adds useful content to your newsletter
and also gives more webmasters the incentive to apply for your
award, since you may review their sites in your newsletter. This
also gives them the incentive to subscribe to your newsletter
to see if they win the award.
Make sure that you give awards to only those sites which deserve
to win. If you give your award to sites which don't deserve it,
your award will have little credibility, which will, in turn,
hurt the credibility of your company. Furthermore, make sure that
the logo you design for the award looks professional. If it doesn't,
not many webmasters will want to display it in their sites.
5) Giving testimonials
This may sound a bit unusual, but giving testimonials for products
or services which you find useful can be another moderately effective
way of improving the link popularity of your site. If you really
like a product, simply write to the company and tell them why
you liked the product so much and how it has helped you. Chances
are, the company will write back to you to thank you for your
comments and will ask you for permission to display your comments
in their web site. Tell the company that you have no problems
if they publish your comments, but request them to add a link
to your site along with the testimonial. There is every possibility
that the company will agree since publishing the URL of your web
site gives more credibility to the testimonial.
Of course, please don't go about giving testimonials to every
company you can locate just because it will improve your link
popularity :-)
6) Posting to Message Boards and Discussion Lists
Another moderately effective method of increasing the link popularity
of your site is to post to online message boards. At the end of
every message that you post, you can sign off by mentioning your
name and the URL of your web site. If the message board allows
it, you can even include a short promotional blurb about your
site at the end of your posts. However, make sure that the individual
messages that are posted to that message board are archived in
static HTML pages (i.e. the URLs for the individual messages should
not contain a "?"). Otherwise, the search engines will
consider these pages to be dynamic pages and may not spider these
pages and hence, will not be able to find your link.
Email based discussion lists which are archived on the web in
static HTML pages can also be used to boost the link popularity
of your site in a similar manner. In this case, the signature
file that you use with your email program should contain the URL
for your web site.
7) Starting a Link Contest
A good method of improving the link popularity of your site is
to give away prizes to other webmasters if they link to you. The
prizes that you give out should ideally be something which other
webmasters will find valuable enough to want to link to you, but
which do not cost you too much. For instance, if you publish a
newsletter, and have unsold ad inventory, you can give away some
free advertisements in your newsletter to the winners. If you
sell a software (or an ebook), you can give away a free copy of
your software or ebook to the winners, since it doesn't cost you
anything to produce an additional copy of digital goods like software
and ebooks.
Link contests work best if you run the contest on a continuous
basis and if you declare new winners frequently. If you run the
contest for a few months, and then stop it, the webmasters who
had linked to you will all remove their links. However, if you
run it on a continuous basis, and declare new winners every month
or so, the webmasters will have the incentive to keep their links
to your site.
Also, make sure that you require all participants to have a link
to your site either in their home page, or in an internal page
of their site which is linked to their home page. Also ensure
that the page which contains the link is no more than two levels
deep from their home page (i.e. it should not take more than two
clicks to go from the home page to the page containing the link).
If they don't do this, the search engine spiders may not index
the page which contains the link to your site, and hence, may
not find your link.
8) Writing articles and allowing them to be re-published
This is by far one of the best ways of improving the link popularity
of your site, and one of my favorites. Whenever I write an article
on search engine placement, I first publish it in my newsletter
and then I publish the article in my site as a separate web page.
I also submit it to the following article submission sites:
http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
Many webmasters and ezine publishers frequent these article directories
in search of articles. Submitting my articles to these directories
gives them the opportunity of re-publishing my articles. While
I have had some success with each of the above directories, by
far the best among them is the ezinearticles.com directory.
Now, at the end of each article, I mention that people are free
to re-publish the article as long as they include my resource
box (i.e. my bio) at the end of the article. I always include
the URL of my site in the resource box. This means that whenever
someone publishes one of my articles in his/her web site, I have
another site linking to my site. Also, many ezine publishers archive
their ezines in their web sites. If they have re-published my
article in a particular issue, I again get a link.
Writing articles is also an excellent viral marketing tool. As
some webmasters and ezine publishers publish my articles, other
webmasters and ezine publishers will read my article. Some of
them, in turn, will publish my article, which will again be read
by other webmasters and ezine publishers, some of whom will publish
it... and so on.
Also, since only web sites related to mine would be interested
in publishing my articles, all these links tend to come from related
sites, which, as I mentioned earlier, are more valuable than links
from unrelated sites.
Writing articles, of course, has another very important benefit
- if you write good articles, it makes you known as an expert
in your field. This helps to improve your credibility, which makes
people more comfortable about buying your products or services.
Some notes about writing articles:
i) I have learnt through experience that some webmasters will
publish other people's articles and will display the complete
resource box but will not link to the URL mentioned in the resource
box. In order to prevent this, you need to explicitly state that
the article can be published only if the URL mentioned in the
resource box is linked to your site.
ii) Your resource box should not be too long - it should be no
more than 6 lines long, formatted at 65 characters per line. Otherwise,
other webmasters and ezine publishers will hesitate to publish
your article.
9) Starting your own affiliate program
This is another excellent way by which you can improve the link
popularity of your site. When you have your own affiliate program,
you give other webmasters the incentive to link to you. In this
case too, since most of these web sites will be related to the
industry in which you are operating, these links will be more
valuable than links from unrelated sites.
Now, when you start your affiliate program, you need to decide
whether you want to run the program yourself, or whether you want
to outsource it from a third party. While outsourcing your affiliate
program has a number of benefits, doing so will not help you improve
the link popularity of your site, because affiliates are going
to link to the third party's site. In order to improve the link
popularity of your site, you need to ensure that the affiliate
links are pointing to your domain.
The affiliate program software that I highly recommend and have
used for the affiliate program of our search engine positioning
services is Kowabunga Technologies' My Affiliate Program. Although
this software is hosted in a domain owned by Kowabunga Technologies,
they give you the option of having the affiliate links pointing
to your own domain.
10) Submitting to the directories
This is by far the most important step as far as improving the
link popularity of your site is concerned. As I mentioned before,
what is important is not only the number of links to your site,
but also the quality of the links to your site. No links are as
important as links from some of the major directories like Yahoo!,
the Open Directory etc. However, Yahoo! currently requires a payment
of $299 per year in order to list any commercial site. Paying
them $299 per year just to improve your link popularity is probably
not cost effective. But, the Open Directory is free, and you should
definitely get your site listed in the Open Directory.
Also, you should submit your site to as many of the smaller directories
as possible. You can get a list of such directories here.
11) Analyzing the quality of links
As mentioned earlier, what is important is not only the number
of sites linking to you, but also the quality of the links that
you have. Until now, there has been no easy way of checking the
quality and relevancy of sites that are linking to you or the
quality and relevancy of sites that you are thinking of asking
for links from. You could have done it manually, but it would
take a tremendous amount of time. However, a new software product
called Optilink automates this process to a large extent. In addition
to doing an excellent job in helping you determine the quality
and relevancy of sites that already link to you or might link
to you, it also does the following:
i) analyzes the link structures of your top ranking competitors
and tells you why they rank well, so that you can emulate the
same tactics that your top ranking competitors are using.
ii) allows you to do "what if" analysis - it tells you
what sort of rankings you can expect if you adopt a particular
linking strategy.
iii) monitor the sites that you have exchanged links with to ensure
that they are still linking to you and are linking to you the
way you want them to.
If you are thinking of improving the link popularity of your site,
or are already doing so, I highly recommend that you obtain this
product before you proceed. You can find more information on Optilink
here
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Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected
and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the Internet.
For more articles on search engine placement, subscribe to his
1st Search Ranking Newsletter by sending a email to
1stSearchRanking.999@optinpro.com
or by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com
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