Cheeze Blog

Part of any good SEO strategies is linking. Google has always placed a value on quality links, both into your site, and from it. Recent reports [including from Cheeze] have suggested that Google is now favouring fresh content over links, but the importance of links has not disappeared.

So what are the methods to achieve more links? Here are ten tips you may find useful, in reverse order…

1. Buying Links - You can buy links for a few dollars a time, from [usually] small ‘directories’ who will list you for [usually] a 12 month period. They often trade off their Google Page Rank as an indication of their quality. These links are fine but Google will see these sites sending far more links out than coming in, and class these sites as directories or link sites. i.e. they do their job but won’t be treated with as much value as other links. There is nothing wrong with such links but you may not see too much return for your money, both from direct traffic from that site, or from any additional link benefit.

2. Reciprocal Links - If you are a site owner, you may get those emails that read, “I visited your website xxxx and thought it looked great. I have a website that is similar, do you fancy swapping links” - whilst the copy may change, the message is the same. If you link to me, I’ll link to you. Well that seems fair enough, if the site is good enough you may wish to link to them. But there are two things to look at here,

i. What relevance to your audience does a link somewhere else offer? If it offers no material benefit to your audience, you should think carefully about the value of it on your site.

ii. Where are you going to place the link? Again if your site is not editorially based, or directory based, you may not have a logical place to put the link. You could place it in a ‘useful sites’ section, but again its a little pointless if it doesn’t offer any value.

Like sites with bought links, Google can spot a reciprocal link at 50 paces (maybe a few more), so the value of that effort may be wasted as Google will place less value on this link. Do also think about the sites that you are linking to you. Are they reputable? If they are or become ‘dodgy’ (remember, sites can change hands) you may face some brand detriment which would not be clever.

3. Three Way Links

One way to get round the obvious reciprocal linking is to undertake three way links. In essence, I link to you, you link to a friend and they link to me [as part of an agreement, not some random act!] That sounds like a plan, but wait - the points raised above still stand - who are you linking to and why? Its a potential but there could be better ways to spend your time.

4. Link Back Out!

I know we have already questioned the reasons for linking out, but if there are genuine reasons or opportunities to do so, make sure you do. A basic link could just go to Wikipedia or back to Google, like I have just done. Linking out helps Google place your site in the ‘world wide web’ which in turn benefits your site by helping Google place you. The advent of blogs has also massively helped boost the number of external links possible. This blog links out wherever possible, when it is appropriate and beneficial to the reader. These links not only help Google place us, but will also help raise awareness of the site.

A great example of this was our post about Google’s seeming preference to fresh content. Manuel’s site picked up our story and talked about it. I know that because he linked to the blog and I was notified of a new inbound link. So by Manuel linking out, he has achieved a link back in like this. I expect Manuel will pick us up as a new inbound link in the morning. So by pushing out, we can gain back in, which leads me onto the most important way to encourage links…

We can also link back out to Thayer Driver, Dean Whitbread and Loudmouthman - three bloggers you would benefit from following who will also see links appear on their radar.

5. Write Good & Unique Content! Google likes unique content, that’s not new. But by writing good content, you will offer people a reason to connect to you. Regrettably few people will link to your site if it offers basic company facts or some dull [but important] insurance policy documentation. What they will link to is content they find interesting and or/useful. Remember, linking is done if there is a value to that site’s readers, so make your content valuable. Manuel’s example demonstrates this - our sites would not have connected if Cheeze had not published content he felt was valuable to his readers.

6. Share! This is a relatively new concept to many people. Content has greater benefit when it is shared. You may notice the icons at the bottom of this post. These are encouraging you to share this content, share it on Digg, Facebook or on social bookmarks like delicious. I want you to share this content. By sharing this content you are extending the site reach to your social sphere. If, say, you shared this on Facebook and you had 100 friends, we would have exposure to another 100 viewers. If 10 people did that, all with 100 friends (let’s keep the numbers simple), our potential reach is another 1,000 people. That’s worth having. Of course we need to write good content for you to even think about sharing, but by adding the tools we make it that bit easier for you to share. If you like this article, please share it, just ensure you credit us and link to us [or we'll set the dogs on you.]

7. Read consume and comment on other blogs. We talked about this back in November, but it is worth discussing again. So most blogs allow you to comment on their article. You can comment on this one below. In the comment section you get to include a URL which becomes a hyperlink on your post. These hyperlinks are recognised by Google, so by commenting on relevant posts with interesting and relevant content [not spam!] you can gain additional visibility for your url.

8. Tell People! I know this sounds obvious, but don’t forget to tell people you have posted. Whether it is a simple email or your social network (we always tell our twitter followers when we have new posts out) its just another opportunity for linnking. You would not only boost the potential for links to your site, but you would also be gaining more traffic, and more links, both from other people in your network and also from Google [many posts from Twitter and Jaiku now appear as unique entries in Google.]

9. Devise a Content Strategy. So all these link options are available to you. None of them are ‘wrong’ as such, but you would have greater potential for benefit by looking at your linking strategy as a content strategy. Remember, unique and fresh content will:

i. Appeal to the search engines

ii. Appeal to other sites who will be more inclined to link to you

iii. Give you the opportunity to promote your content to a wider audience and comment on other people’s content.

10. Hire Cheeze! OK you can stop reading now :-). Your linking strategy does take time, and it takes skill to manage it properly. Thats what we do [well, one of the many things we do] - we help clients devise content strategies which in turn become the linking strategies with added SEO value. We can help define the content, prepare editorial plans and ensure all content is linked, shared and talked about. As part of the Digital Marketing Group plc. we have teams of writers, we can design and build blogs and deliver successful link building strategies as stand alone projects or wider SEO projects. Maybe we can help you?

11. OK, one last one.. Don’t try and put links into Wikipedia, or any of the new wave of ‘human edited’ encyclopaedias coming out. Wikipedia has very strong algorithims that can spot new content and can instantly evaluate credibility of a poster (they can spot regulars vs. people ‘popping on’ to fiddle with a specific article) Wikipedia also intriduced [no follow] tags to all links which tells Google to discard these links from an optimisation process, so you are wasting your time. Again, if you have valuable content, someone may reference you which would be much much better.

Don’t forget the share buttons down here.