So… you have your web site and it looks lovely. All the text has been optimised for search engines. Pages are focused on specific topics and it has been released on the world. You’ve even manually submitted it to Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Yet two months later you are barely ranking in any of the search engines. Even where you are ranking well it is for keywords that you have little chance of getting any traffic from.
So what is missing? Links of course!
Links are very important to your site. Not only do they provide a way for search engines to discover your site, but they are also seen as a ‘vote’ of trust for your site. A few decent links to your site can make all the difference between being on page one and being an also ran.
The Good
Ideally you want the sites that link to you to have the following attributes:
- They will rank well for terms that you are trying to rank on
- They don’t have too many links on the page where you hope to get a link from
- They don’t violate any Google Guidelines on their site
A site with all three is an ideal candidate for a link.
The keywords used in the link text, or the alt/title attribute text if it is a graphical link, will also be associated with your site. Additionally search engines look at the text surrounding the link; so if that contains relevant keywords that’s even better.
Overall the more relevant the web site is to your keywords, and the more trusted it is by the search engines, the more of a bonus your site is going to get from a link.
The Bad
Not many sites will cause you any real harm if they link to you – but they don’t offer any benefit either. It will simply be a waste of time.
Link farms, “Made for AdSense” and low value forums and blogs are generally the biggest waste of time. Many have the ‘nofollow’ attribute set on all links coming off the site, so you don’t get any credit for it. The search engines generally ignore the rest since they hold little relevancy to your site.
You can recognise “Made for AdSense” sites since they tend to have a lot of adverts, very little or blatantly copied content, and a very large number of links. Any site like this is to be avoided.
The worst thing about getting links from these sites is that they will want links back in return. You may not get penalised for the incoming link, but there is a good chance that you will be penalised for linking out to them.
This is another reason to avoid linking to any site that breaches the Google Guidelines. The risk of having your site penalised with the major search engines is not worth the gain you would possibly get from the link.
The Ugly
I’ll start off with reciprocal linking. This is where two sites link to each other. Google has become very good at detecting these mutual connections and treats them as less valuable than one-way links. That’s not to say don’t use reciprocal links, just don’t expect them to carry the same value as getting a link without having to provide one in return. Three way links (from site A to site B to site C and back to site A) are also treated in a similar way.
Low value directories are also not a good place to get links from. Many don’t actually link to your site without payment – so having your details appear for “free” may mean that the directory page describing your organisation will appear in search results instead of your web site. Many also add a ‘nofollow’ attribute on link they do use, which prevents the link from being useful.
This shouldn’t stop you submitting your site to high value directories like DMOZ. However for DMOZ in particular this does take a little time.
Summary
What you want are high value relevant links from trustworthy sites. These often don’t link out much, but there are still a few good places to find them.
One good place to start looking is your clients and suppliers. Since you already have good relationships with them they should be more willing to give you a link. Particularly your suppliers; after all if you get more sales so do they!
If you’d like more help – just get in touch!
It should do, the basic guidelines here have been true for the last few years at the very least.
I don’t see any reason why it should change in the near future unless the search engines suddenly decide to stop using links as one of their major metrics.
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