Developing Inbound Links

Link popularity plays an important role in the search engine game, especially when it comes to Google. Without other sites linking to you, you're unlikely to climb to the top of the search results, but it needs the links to get the links – in other words, it needs to show the other webmasters that it is worthy of a link.  

If you are a new site with no inbound links and with zero page rank, chances are most webmasters will not link to you (even if you have some good content), assuming that they will harm their PR by linking to you. So how can we overcome this problem? Before you groan in defeat, let me explain.

1. Submitting your site to ODP is a good start. (Open Directory Project). But remember ODP mostly list sites with unique content which may be of use to searchers. Remember that. Contemplate it. Become one with it. In other words, if your site is simply an affiliate banner farm, either create more content, or don’t bother trying to submit.

2. My site is a banner farm. What should I do? Try submitting to Yahoo! Yahoo! has two ways to submit a site to its directory: priority submission (this will cost you $600 for an adult site and takes seven days to get in, and Basic Submit (where the chances are you won't get listed).

3. You also can ask for some links from related small directories by doing a search for them on Google, using a search such as “your keywords" + "directory" or "your keywords" + "directories."

4. Become a content provider in your focus area, and get your articles posted across the Net in related areas with a link to your web site.

5. Set up an affiliate program, which is an excellent way to boost link popularity. AssocTrac is a good example since you host it on your own server. Affiliate services that require your affiliates to link to their server will not help your link popularity rating.

More Helpful Tips

1. Concentrate on related and important links only. Sheer numbers are no longer important. What's important is that the more popular sites on the Web link to your site, as well as making sure that the links pointing to your site are relevant to your topic area.

2. Consider setting up separate theme-oriented domains and link all of your domains together.

3. Create a testimonial page, and write a brief testimonial about any Web site that you'd like to get linked to your site. Inform the site of the testimonial, and encourage them to link to the page.

4. Offer awards on your site, and give out little graphics that link back to your site.

5. Visit the Reciprocal Linkage Topics area of Webmaster World forums and look for new ideas for building link popularity

Don'ts

Don't make the mistake of thinking that link popularity isn't important or necessary. High link popularity combined with some basic keyword optimization is sometimes all it takes to achieve top rankings. It's crucial, in many cases, to the success of an online business.

Don't use redirects on those sites pointing back to your main site if you create separate theme focused sites for the purpose of boosting link popularity. Rather, create a mini site at the new URL with several pages of good, solid content, and then visibly link back to the main site.

Don't participate in link exchange programs or link farms. Google will ban sites that participate in link exchange programs, and many of the other major engines have also expressed their dislike of artificially created link popularity.

Don't share the same IP address for each domain if you interlink multiple domains that you own. All domains should have unique IP's.

Don't bother with free-for-all pages. Many bulk submission products submit to these. Generally the only thing these pages will guarantee is an increase in spam email if you participate

If you have done these steps right, you probably have gained some acceptable PR on your site by now. Now it’s time to use your link popularity to gain even more links… Stay Tuned.

Asking for Links From Related Sites

Before asking for a link from a web site, make sure that you have some decent PR on your site. Getting a link to a site with no PR takes several times the effort than it does on a site with a decent PR on it, and also make sure that you are getting links from related sites with more PR than yours – especially if you are linking back to them. Basically, search engines look at your link popularity in several ways:

The number of hyperlinks to your web pages.
The Reputation or popularity of the web sites that link to your domain.
The Relevance of the web sites that link to you.
The number of click troughs and duration of sessions. ***

You can find sites to link to by doing searches on Google for key phrases like:

"Add a link" + "your keyword(s)"
"Add a site" + "your keyword(s)"
"Add URL" + "your keyword(s)"
"Add an URL" + "your keyword(s)"
"Submit a link" + "your keyword(s)"
"Submit a site" + "your keyword(s)"
"Submit URL" + "your keyword(s)"
"Submit an URL" + "your keyword(s)"
"Suggest a link" + "your keyword(s)"
"Suggest a site" + "your keywords(s)"
"Suggest URL" + "your keyword(s)"
"Suggest an URL" + "your keyword(s)"
"Your Region" + "Add url"

You should also find out who is ranking in the top ten for your main keywords, then run a link popularity check and find out who links to them. Before you approach these sites, here's a list of the most important data you'll need to manage.

The name of the site
The URL
The name and email address of the person who runs the site
The date you contact the person who runs the site and the date he or she responds
The resulting deal (Some will say yes, some will say no, others will not reply at all, others will want a link back from you, some may want money for links, some will be out of town and take weeks to reply, etc.)
The status of the deal
Verifying that the link is in place
Checking the site periodically for the link (Yes, some folks swap links and then pull yours for odd reasons.)

When you are asking for a link, make sure that you write your request in a pleasant way. Lots of webmasters do not like seeing phrases like "If you link to me, I'll link to you", or "I think you should link to me, you'll be glad you did" – just say ‘Hi’ and ask them to look at your site, and see if they'd be interested in linking to your site.

So, as one can see, at any given point in your inbound-link campaign, you have many sites and link-negotiation deals to keep track of. Remember that linking campaigns never really end; you should constantly be looking for sites from which to set up inbound links.

Devote your time to build a solid inbound linking campaign for your web site. Not only it will help your site in the rankings, but it will help you to have some friends in your in your field from around the world.

*** The number of click troughs and duration of sessions. Currently I don’t any evident proof to back this up but Google does have (future?) ideas on these things - the questions remains how well they can be implemented or be kept spam free:

1. A Google patent: "Methods and apparatus for employing usage statistics in document retrieval" [0036] The frequency of visit score equals log2(1+log(VF)/log(MAXVF). VF is the number of times that the document was visited (or accessed) in one month, and MAXVF is set to 2000. A small value is used when VF is unknown. If the unique user is less than 10, it equals 0.5*UU/10; otherwise, it equals 0.5*(1+UU/MAXUU). UU is the number of unique hosts/IPs that access the document in one month, and MAXUU is set to 400. A small value is used when UU is unknown. The path length score equals log(K-PL)/log(K). PL is the number of `/` characters in the document's path, and K is set to 20.

2. from Henzinger, Motwani and Silverstein: Challenges in Web Search Engines To give just one example, users have grown accustomed to ignoring text on the periphery of a web page [12], which in many cases consists of navigational elements of advertisements. Search engines could use positional information, as expressed in the layout code to adjust the weight given to various sections of text in the document.

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