Link Building
Link Building is the process of enhancing the Link Popularity of a webpage by creating
links to it from other domains, in order to increase Search Engine Ranking of that
webpage.
Although the major benefit of Link Building is to increase the rankings of a webpage
on Search Engines for different keywords, Link Popularity Building also helps increase
the PR of a webpage, increase direct traffic, help in deep indexing of a website
etc.
Incoming links (also known as inbound links and non reciprocal links) have gained
unprecedented importance in high ranking of your website. More and more major search
engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista etc. rely on off-page
factors such as 'Link Popularity' to determine how important your site is in order
to rank it high. Now web site optimization, no matter how nicely it is done, is
not sufficient to get you good rankings. A large number of good incoming links help
your website beat competition to rank higher in the Search Engines.
It is also important to note that all links are not created equal. The search engines
evaluate the incoming links on various parameters to determine the value of each
site linking to you. Some important aspects which search engines evaluate are -
PageRank of the linking webpage, total outgoing links on the linking webpage, industry
relevance of the linking webpage, page relevance, keywords in anchor text, etc.
What is Link Popularity?
Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your site, from other
sites on the web. The Search Engines consider your site important and rank it higher
if several other sites link to your site.
You can check your link popularity by performing a search for this on Google by
typing in the following command -
link:www.yourdomain.com
The above command gives you a selective list of links, usually from PR4+ link pages.
For a more extensive list, you may search the following syntax -
"yourdomain.com" -site:www.yourdomain.com
History behind Link Popularity and
Google PageRank
Web, by its very nature is based on hyperlinks, where sites link to other prominent
sites. If you take the logic that you would tend to link to sites that you consider
important, in essence, you are casting a vote in favour of the sites that you link
to. When hundreds or thousands of sites link to a site, it is logical to assume
that such a site would be good and important.
Taking this logic further the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page formulated
a Search Engine algorithm that shifted the ranking weight to off-page factors. They
evolved a formula called PageRank (named after its founder Larry Page) where the
algorithm would count the number of sites that link to a page and assign it an importance
score on a scale of 1-10. More the number of sites that link to a page, higher its
PageRank.
PageRank is important because it is one of the primary off-page factors that influences
your page’s ranking in the search engine result pages.
PageRank in Google's own Words
Google explains PageRank as follows:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link
structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets
a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks
at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes
the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important"
weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers
each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if
they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching
techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google
goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects
of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine
if it's a good match for your query.
For more information on Google PageRank, go to:
Benefits of Building Link Popularity
Building Link Popularity is one of the most important and critical aspects of any
effective Search Engine Optimization campaign today. The ‘off-page’ factors such
as link popularity, PageRank and Anchor Text in incoming links play a major role
in your site’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Search Engines consider your site more important if more links point to your site.
Building link popularity improves the PageRank of your web pages PageRank. The higher
the PageRank of your website, the higher its importance for search engines and higher
it gets ranked in the search engine result pages. Search engines also take into
account the PageRank of the pages that link to your site and its industry relevance
to your own industry. Links from higher PageRank pages and industry relevant sites
give your site a higher value.
Types of Links
There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One way is to trade links
(Link Exchange), where you give a link from the links Page on your site to the partner
sites. The second method is to establish ‘only-incoming’ links also called ‘one-way
links’ or ‘Non-Reciprocal links’.
Only-Incoming Links
Only incoming links are the links established on the other websites where you do
not need to link back to them.
There are various compelling reasons and methods to establish such one-way links
which include linking back from a different website that you may own, publishing
articles on sites, content syndication, listing in trade directories and giving
out press releases in news networks.
Link Exchange
Link exchange is an easier way to establish links from other websites to your website.
In link exchange process, you trade links with prospective partner sites by offering
a link to their site from your own site. This method is a fast way to establish
several hundred links to your website. However, it may not get you great benefits.
Only Incoming Links vs. Link Exchange
Google developed the PageRank algorithm to provide authentic and quality information
while making it difficult for webmasters and site owners to contaminate the search
results by artificially inflating their PageRank.
The new algorithm came into effect with the launch of Google in 1998. Google’s PageRank
was based on the logic that more the number of sites that link to a page, higher
its PageRank.
As Webmasters realized the importance of PageRank, they found ways to artificially
inflate their PageRank by manipulating direct link exchanges. This defeated the
very essence on which the Google PageRank algorithm was built. To counter this,
Google has constantly been fine-tuning and updating its algorithms.
The search engines are aware that a large number of sites are deploying link exchange
campaigns to boost their site’s PR. Search engines are working towards fine-tuning
their algorithms to discount direct link exchanges in order to preserve the effect
of their link popularity related algorithms and rationalize artificially inflated
links popularity of sites.
While the algorithms are yet to reflect this change, we believe that it may happen
soon enough. In the long run, we recommend investing your resources in an ‘only-incoming
links’ campaign for your website which is likely to benefit your site more as opposed
to a direct link exchange campaign.
Important Parameters to Consider while Building Link Popularity
Some of the important parameters that you need to consider while establishing links
with any website are discussed below:
PageRank or PR of the Linking Page
PR of the linking page is one of the most important factors. PR of the linking page
determines how much value of importance is passed on to your page. The higher the
PR of the linking page the higher the value you get. The home page PR is not as
important, but it is an indicator of how much PR a linking page may jump to, in
due course. For instance, if the PR of the site’s link page is 0, but the home page
PR is 6, then, there is a bright possibility that in a month or two, the link page
PR may also jump to a PR of 4 or even 5 due to the internal linking structure of
the partner site. While sites would be happy to give out links from a PR 0 page,
you can estimate that in two months time, this link page can jump to a high PR,
giving you great value in the future.
Identifying Total Number of Links on the Link Page
The value your web page gets from a linking page is equal to the total PR value
of that page divided by the total number of outgoing links on that page. Getting
a link from a PR4 page that has only 20 outgoing links is much better than getting
a link from a PR4 page that has 60 outgoing links. With the same philosophy, it
is better to get a link from a PR2 link page that has only 10 outgoing links than
getting a link from a PR4 page that has over 100 outgoing links. It is therefore
as important to evaluate the total number of outgoing links on a links page, as
it is, to evaluate the PR of the linking page. This is where many people often falter,
as they usually insist on getting a link from a high PR page, but if that page has
100 outgoing links, your page would only get 1/100th of that value.
Industry Relevance
Search engines give high importance to links pointing to your site from your own
industry segment as opposed to those from an un-related industry. For instance,
a hotels and reservations website is likely to benefit more from links pointing
from a related industry site like travel, vacation packages or cruises, than those
from an unrelated industry like a drug site.
Industry relevance also needs to be given a high weight while creating resource
directories. For example, if you have a site related to hotels, then you can create
a resource directory related to your business that could be pertaining to travel,
tourism, cruises, vacation rentals, vacation packages, car rentals, food and beverages
etc.
Page Relevance
Most sites offering links have several categories listed on their sites. Try and
get a link from a category that closely matches your own industry. For instance,
if you have a site related to hotels, then, on your partner site, a tickets site
for example, try and identify a resource directory pertaining to hotels, resorts,
reservations, vacation packages, travel, tourism, food and beverages etc. If the
concerned site has a directory on hotels, you should request a link in that category,
as a link from that page would be relevant to a hotels site, thus getting you more
benefits. An algorithm called “Applied Semantics” determines the industry relevance
of a page within a site. Applied Semantics algorithm studies various keywords on
a web page and tries to determine the industry or business segment of each page.
Applied Semantics estimates the industry segments that are relevant to a particular
page. If the link to your page is coming from your business specific segment, then
you are likely to draw more benefit.
Anchor Text
Anchor Text is the visible hyperlinked text on a web page. Since anchor text is
very important, make sure that your most important keywords appear in anchor text
from the link pointing to your site. You should try and work with at-least 10-20
keywords and link text options. If you are creating a large number of links using
only one standard link text, then the search engines are likely to detect a pattern.
It is possible that future algorithm updates may do away with all repetitive and
similar looking links to your site.
Pre-Indexed Pages
Try and find link partners in Search Engines like Google and Yahoo, and check if
the links page is already indexed in the search engines. Search Engines frequently
re-index the pages in its database. They are likely to detect your link faster on
a page already existing in their database as compared to a ‘yet-to-be indexed’ page.
The safest way to check is to copy the prospective link page URL and paste it into
Google Search. If the page is indexed, Google would show a result in response to
your search, otherwise it would respond with a ‘no result found’.
The robots.txt file
robots.txt is an exclusion file that contains specific instructions for search engine
robots regarding the content they are not allowed to index. Links placed on a page
that the search engines robots are not allowed to index, would not benefit your
site. Considering the importance of robots.txt file, it is a good idea to study
a site’s robots.txt file to identify the excluded pages before approaching a site
for establishing links with your site.
Dynamic Link Pages
You should also watch out for any link pages that are generated dynamically. Chances
are that such pages would not get indexed soon enough, which means that a link from
such a page would not benefit you. Some dynamic link pages are intentionally generated
in such a way so as to prevent them from getting indexed. Some unscrupulous webmasters
do this to trick you to prevent any PageRank leaking from their site to yours. Links
from such pages therefore do not give you any benefit.
Java Script Link Pages
It is also important to identify pages that are generated through Flash or a Java
Script, as Search Engines cannot read flash pages or the links embedded within flash.
These are some of the tricks unethical webmasters use. While a site can claim to
have placed a link to your web page, in effect they are not giving you any benefit.
Re-Directed Links
A link that is first re-directed to another page within your partner site before
pointing to your site is a re-directed link. You should watch out for such links,
as search engines do not give weight to re-directed links. It is very unlikely that
your site would draw any benefit from a re-directed link.
Frame Sites
Avoid getting links from framed sites as search engines cannot read texts within
frames. A link placed on a frame site would not get your site any benefit, as search
engines would not be able to recognize such a link.
Directory Depth
It is important to evaluate the depth of the directory of the linking page. Avoid
getting links from pages that are embedded in a very deep directory or pages that
are more than two directories deep (e.g. www.domain.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/linkpage.htm
is not a good link page). Deep directories seldom earn high PR. They are also slow
in getting indexed, if at all.
Building Link Popularity is a great way to help your site gain competitive PR. Links
from other sites also sends direct human traffic to your site. Observing a little
care in developing links will go a long way in getting your site rank high in search
engines.
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