SEO - Inbound Links Rule your Rank

One of the most difficult and most critical aspects of getting your site indexed by search engines is getting inbound links, or links from another site to yours. If there is one factor that most affects your ranking on search engines, it is the number and quality of inbound links your site has.

How inbound links work

On the web, every link to your site counts as a measurable vote of confidence. When another site links to yours, what they are saying virtually is "I think this other site is worth visiting".

Not every vote is equal, however. For instance, take www.funbrain.com , which has around 14,600 inbound links according to Google, and www.amazon.com , which has 340,000. Because www.amazon.com has more votes, a link from their site to yours is considered more powerful than a link from www.funbrain.com , which has only 5% of the inbound links that www.amazon.com has.

Google calls this measurement of popularity PageRank, and all of the major search engines employ their own unique version of a ranking system.

Google is currently the only company actually offering any tools to determine what a web site's PageRank is. For Internet Explorer users, you will need to download the Google Toolbar, which you can find at toolbar.google.com/googlebar.html. A feature on this toolbar will allow you to see the PageRank of any web page on a little green bar. This is currently one of the best tools available to determine a web site's popularity, but it does have its drawbacks, which I will cover later.

Note: Even though PageRank is a Google measurement, I will use the term throughout these lessons in reference to the general measurement of reputation used by any of the major search engines.

For users of Mozilla Firefox , there is an extension called "SearchStatus" available on quirk.co.za/searchstatus/ . This is my personal tool of choice for several reasons. It offers a drop-down menu which has the option of showing the inbound links of any page in all three of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN), and there is also a PageRank bar and Alexa bar. Alexa uses a rating system based on user popularity rather than linking popularity. While this method of ranking popularity isn't that helpful in search engine optimization, being able to view it so quickly is an added bonus in an online world with little in the way of objective measurements of popularity.

Google PageRank Tip

Tip : Google updates PageRank about once every two months, purposefully causing a delay so that it is difficult to track how search engine strategies are affecting PageRank. This means that your site may have been indexed by Google and has a number of inbound links but will still show a PageRank of 0. A gray PageRank bar indicates that a page has not yet been indexed. When the bar turns white, even if there is no green, the page has been indexed.

You can determine how many links a web sites has by using the "link:" modifier in any of the major search engines. For instance, to see how many inbound links Google has, you would type the following into the search engine:

How is PageRank Calculated?

There are formulas available on the web that explains the nitty-gritty of the PageRank algorithm, but for now I will keep the explanation simple.

The PageRank of a site is measured on a scale from 0 to 10. A newer site will likely have PageRank of 0 starting out. Very popular sites like www.google.com will have a PageRank of 10. The scale of PageRank is not linier, rather it takes larger numbers of incoming links to bump a web page up another notch. So where it might take 10 incoming links to reach a PageRank of 2, it might take 50 to reach a PageRank of 4 and 500 to get a PageRank of 5. These numbers are purely hypothetical, since PageRank takes into account the quality of an incoming link as well and their number. The important concept is that it is more difficult to achieve each successive level of PageRank.

A little more about PageRank

PageRank is distributed on a voting system. That means if I have a decently ranked web page and I might have, say 50 points worth of voting power. If I add a link from that page to yours, you would get all 50 points of my voting power. If I link to, say, 5 other web pages, each one might get a fifth of my total vote, passing on 10 points to each. From this theory, every time a new link is created, there is more overall PageRank in existence than there was before.

You will notice as you surf through SERPs that the web sites that appear higher in rank often have a higher PageRank. PageRank and SERP ranking often go hand in hand.

Getting inbound links to your web site

Getting inbound links is one of the most difficult parts of search engine optimization because it's the one thing you can't do by yourself. Getting a link from another site requires action on the part of another web developer, so the trick is making it worth their while to add the link.

Generating inbound links will require some creativity on your part. Soliciting one-way inbound links (meaning a web site links to you, but you don't link to it) is a daunting task, mostly because it's difficult to offer enough incentive to another web site owner to get them to add a link. Unless you can offer something in return, soliciting links is usually a dead end road.

Online directories

Your first target for inbound links should be online directories. Their incentive for adding a link to your site is that they want as comprehensive a directory as possible, and adding your site will get them closer to their goal. Many directories only require that your site falls within a certain category, so it's usually as simple as submitting a form with your information and waiting until the addition is approved.

The most popular online directory can be found at www.dmoz.org . Most of the pages within dmoz have substantial PageRank, meaning that getting a link on their site will give your site a boost in PageRank. Submitting your site to this directory is a must, but be patient because it can sometimes take a couple of months to get listed.

Other web directory ideas

Scour the web for locally oriented directories, such as the Chamber of Commerce and other local business directories. Having a specific location as a base for your web site will mean easier entry into area-oriented directories, since your common theme with the directory will be your location.

Reciprocal Linking

One solution many web site owners opt for when it comes to increasing the number of links to their site is something called reciprocal linking. A reciprocal link is when you offer a link on your site to another web site in return for an inbound link. Another way of looking at the relationship is that you are "swapping" links.

Reciprocal Linking - The Good

Reciprocal linking is free and provides a good incentive to other web sites to add a link to your site on theirs. That makes it the ideal choice for web site owner with limited funds and extra time. For most smaller web sites such as hobby sites, outgoing links are an abundant resource. It only takes a moment to add a link, and it doesn't cost a thing. Offering to swap links just makes adding the link worthwhile, and benefits both parties. These exchanges are fairly typical and are executed fairly easily.

More serious web site owners may take greater consideration with outgoing links. For them, an outgoing link is considered a precious resource since they will limit their numbers. They may require that you have a certain amount of PageRank before they will consider the trade.

The best thing about reciprocal linking is that while increasing PageRank with inbound links, you will also increase the amount of traffic to your site through those links. Since increased traffic is the ultimate goal of search engine optimization, you end up killing two birds with one stone.

Reciprocal Linking - The Bad

Reciprocal linking is a relatively easy way to increase your PageRank, making it a popular choice among new web developers. The potential costs, however, should be weighed carefully.

The biggest problem with reciprocal linking is that the responsibility of bad SEO techniques trickle down. Search engines tell us that linking to non-reputable sites can have a negative effect on your own rankings. By this they mean that if a site is engaging in bad search engine optimization techniques, and they are penalized as a result, your link to them might mean a penalty for your site.

I've seen it happen before, and the effects can be devastating and often permanent. If you engage in reciprocal linking, you need to be sure that the site you are linking to is going about things the right way, otherwise you might take some of their fall.

Reciprocal Linking - Techniques

When seeking out reciprocal links, it's important to find sites that are related to the subject matter of your own site. The benefit to this technique is threefold: 1) Search engines will get a better idea of what your site is about based on the "neighborhood" of web sites linking to yours, 2) Traffic coming directly from the links is more likely to be targeted traffic, and 3) The links will look less suspicious to search engines.

Suspicious? Why would a search engine care where your links are coming from? One of Google's rules in their Terms of Use is that sites cannot sell PageRank. That means that a site can't sell another site a link just to pass on PageRank. It happens all the time, but if Google happens to catch wind of it they can administer a heavy penalty on the site doing the linking. If a site has multiple links on other non-related web sites, it may trigger a flag with Google to investigate possible PageRank fraud.

Soliciting reciprocal links successfully has two parts. First, make it clear on your web site that you are looking for reciprocal links. This will give others the opportunity to come to you, saving you some footwork. Next, come up with a clear plan for solicitation. We live in a world where spam is rampant and retaliated against. If you send an e-mail to a web developer and they interpret it as spam, you could be reported and subsequently banned from many e-mail servers, inadvertently shooting yourself in the foot on your quest for linkage.

Make reciprocal link e-mail personalized

The key here is to make your e-mails personalized and hype-free. While your emails can have some form-mail content, you want to make it clear to the recipient that you have visited their site, like what you see and feel that a trading links is a good idea for the both of you. The linking relationship will likely be of equal value to each of you, so there's no reason to talk your site up unnecessarily.

There is a software tool available called Zeus (www.cyber-robotics.com) that helps you take a systematic approach to generating and maintaining a reciprocal link program. Through a series of steps, the software will scan the web for related sites, supply you with the e-mail addresses of the site owners, and offer you advice on how to approach e-mailing the owners. It then will generate a directory of links based on your input, which you can upload to your site. Many web site owners have found this system to be very useful and quicker than the traditional machine-gun approach of finding reciprocal links helter-skelter.

Another Google tip

Tip : Google has publicly stated that they will respect the "nofollow" attribute in hyperlinks , meaning that if you add a rel="nofollow" to your hyperlink, Google will neither follow it nor pass PageRank through it. This is useful when trying to hide pages from Google, but is also a technique some directories and reciprocal links use to conserve their own PageRank and save themselves from potential trickle-down penalties. When soliciting a reciprocal link, take note if your potential partner is using the "nofollow" attribute in their links. While a link from their site still may drive traffic, it won't count as an inbound link or improve your PageRank.

What about paying for links?

Paying for links should be considered for one reason only: generating traffic directly from the link. Paying for links in an effort to boost your own rankings can be a less than successful venture. First of all, most sites offering paid links will charge a hefty premium, and getting several paid links could eat up precious resources very quickly. Secondly, since selling PageRank is considered against Google's terms of service, they can easily interpret the selling of links as the selling of PageRank and penalize the site. When that happens, the link you paid for may no longer be worth anything in terms of passing on PageRank.

The best techniques for getting incoming links

By far, the best and most sustainable technique for generating inbound links is to offer something that other web site owners will want to link to without solicitation.

With the advent of wide-scale blogging (online journaling), web pages are being generated much more quickly than ever before, and site owners who specialize in offering their readers the best of the web are constantly seeking out fresh content. You can take advantage of this by giving them something to write about. Here are some suggestions, many of which have worked for me in the past:

• Offer high-quality articles related to the subject matter of your site for free. People love free information, plus the added content will add to your search engine optimization efforts.
• Offer a fun, interactive element such as a game or flash presentation.
• Make your site design unique in a very distinctive way. Consider www.guimp.com, which claims to be the smallest web site in the world and has a series of web pages that fit on a 18 by 18 pixel square. That's unique, and it has a significant number of inbound links due to its novelty.
• Offer a valuable service of some kind for free. For instance, offering free contact form processing, finding the geographical location of an IP address, or perhaps even offer your own directory.
• Offer timely content in blog format, related to current events or concepts in a particular niche subject area. For every blog being written, there are 10 blog readers looking for the very latest information in a useful format.
• If you're conducting ecommerce (selling of goods or services online), offer significant discounts for a short time, enough to draw some good attention.
• Offer a good affiliate program. If you offer a significant cut of sales to those referring business to you, other sites will find ways to advertise your site in an effort to increase their own revenue.
• If you are offering a resource of some kind, you can typically find online forums where you can share some of your expertise and eventually draw visitors to your site. This is sometimes a challenge because with the amount of spam forums typically get, non-established members can often get a bad rap if they put a plug in for their sites too soon after joining. Approach posting in forums with caution to avoid getting bad press.

Lesson Summary

Lesson Summary

Finding inbound links is the most challenging task a webmaster will face when search engine optimizing a site because they can't do it alone. We covered the three most popular and accessible methods of developing inbound links - directories, reciprocal linking and paid links - and offered a list of useful strategies for getting unsolicited inbound links.

Getting links to your site is a long-term task. Spend several hours each week seeking links and developing interesting content on your site and you will start to see traffic to your site rise.