Saturday, May 16, 2009

Structuring a Link Building Campaign

There are five major components to a link building campaign.
These are:


1. Getting links from authoritative domains
2. Getting links from a volume of domains
3. Getting links to pages other than the home page (also known as "deep links")
4. Local links for local rankings
5. Getting the anchor text needed to drive rankings.


1. Getting Links from Authoritative Domains

Major government sites, major university sites, or major media sites are potentially authoritative.
No public data available to identify authority Collect the most likely 10 potentials
See which of those 10 has the most links from the other nine.

linkdomain:potentialauthoritydomain1.com site:potentialauthoritydomain2.com

Need to figure out what it will take to get these types of sites to link
What? Where?
Direct and indirect approaches of getting links


2. Getting Links from A Volume of Domains

100 links from one domain are not nearly as valuable as one link from 100 domains.
Vote / Editorial decision


3. Getting Links to Pages Other Than The Home Page (aka “Deep Links")

Publishers should look to get links to each major section of their site.
Each page on a web site has the opportunity to rank for different search terms.
Supporting those pages with direct links will help them rank better.
This is particularly true for larger sites, but is also applies to sites of any size.


4. Local Links for Local Rankings

Publisher should also look to obtain links from other local businesses.
A link from the local chamber of commerce is likely to be helpful in ranking for local search terms.
Other similar sources are –
Local business directories
The local chapter of the Better Business Bureau
Local libraries
Local businesses
Local clubs
Getting links from these sources reinforces the local theme of the publisher’s site or web page.


5. Getting The Anchor Text Needed to Drive Rankings

One of the most powerful factors in search rankings.
SEs use anchor text to provide further evidence of what the page receiving the link is about.
Since these are assumed to be specified by the person giving the link, it is a factor that is potentially very powerful.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The Theory and Goals of Link Building for SEO

The Theory and Goals of Link Building for SEO

Link building is the practice of getting other sites to link back to your website. This can often be done using a wide variety of strategies, such as:

Asking for a link
Giving away content or tools
Widget development
Social media campaigns
Purchasing links and more….
But first, let’s start with the basic theories…


* Why Link Building Matters

Whenever any user enters a query into a search engine, the search engine needs to determine how to return the best results. How? There are two key steps:
Figure out which pages on the web are related in any way to the query
Evaluate which of the pages that relate to the query are the most important
Each link to a web page is seen as a vote for that web page.
In simple terms, if there are two pages that are equally relevant to a given search query, the page with the better inbound link profile will rank higher than the other page (being all other factors equal).
Hence, the need of Link Building!


*How Search Engines Evaluate Links

Each link to a web page is a vote for that web page.
That implies the higher the PR, the more the value of that vote. This is partially true. But, two votes may not have equal weight even if they are from same PR page.
Value of vote depends on – Relevance and Authority
Now let’s take a deeper look at these factors…


* Relevance Factor

Theme of the linking website
Purpose of the linking website
Topic of the linking page