The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
June 2004, Volume 3, Issue 2

Top 10 Best Practices for Building Your Site’s Link Popularity

by Brian Kaminski, Client Services Director, iProspect

Ever been puzzled by search engine results? Ever wonder how a search could return such irrelevant results? This is because numerous site owners have altered their Web pages in order to make them rank well on important keywords regardless of whether their site contains any content related to those keywords. This is bad for search engine users and bad for the search engines. Search engines thrive by delivering relevant results to users, and they can rapidly lose users if they deliver irrelevant results. In an effort to improve their results, many search engines now include methods for assessing and measuring a site’s credibility in their ranking algorithms.

The logic behind examining certain factors that are outside a site’s actual content is that these factors are much more difficult for unethical site owners to bias. The most important, and most widely used, factor for determining search engine credibility is link popularity. Link popularity reflects the quantity, quality and relevance of links from other websites pointing to your site. It helps to think of link popularity as a system of “voting” where pointing a link from one site to another is a way of casting a vote for, or endorsing that site, and boosting its credibility in the eyes of the search engines.

Numerous other measures exist for boosting your website’s credibility. Some are legitimate; others will do more harm than good. Below are ten best practices that you should consider in reviewing your site’s link popularity before beginning any initiatives to boost that popularity.

10. Keyword Buys

Many site marketers bid on keywords through programs such as Google AdWords or Overture as a means of driving traffic to their sites. These programs can be very successful. However, in order to track the click for billing purposes these search properties do not provide direct links from your ads on their sites to your site – instead routing the click to their “counter” first. As a result, these ads provide no added links and give no link popularity to your site. Many marketers assume that these listings help improve link popularity. They do not, and so should not be used with that intent.

9. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are another widely used source for gathering traffic and can also be an effective source of valuable links. However, make sure that your affiliate program (whether it is your own or one managed by an affiliate vendor) provides direct links to your site. Similar to keyword buys, most affiliate programs point the link to a third party counter before it goes to your site, thereby detouring potential link popularity gains before they are realized.

8. Beware of Bogus Domains/Micro Sites

In an effort to inflate their link popularity, some marketers create numerous micro sites and then place links from those micro sites to their main site. Unfortunately, this tactic is not effective. The micro sites have little or no “voting” power, so to speak, since they lack search engine credibility, so the links coming from them will not provide any significant benefits to the main site. Instead, marketers would be better served by obtaining links from a “real” site.

7. Utilize Partnerships/Suppliers

Nearly all businesses have partnerships. Working with your partners to have them link to your site can be beneficial. If you manufactured trucks and all of your trucks had tires from one tire manufacturer and that tire manufacturer only bought rubber from a certain manufacturing plant, you could ask the tire company to place a link from their site to yours. In turn, the tire company could ask the rubber manufacturer to link to their site. This will add link popularity to your truck site.

6. Site Mapping/Internal Linking

Many website marketers fail to use pages on their own site to boost credibility. When evaluating link popularity, search engines consider internal (links from pages within your own website) as well as external links. The logic is that if a page is not important on your own website, then how could it possibly be important within the billions of pages on the Web? Make use of a comprehensive sitemap and extensive internal linking in order to maximize your website’s potential in this area.

5. Industry Associations/Verticals

It’s always wise to try to obtain links to you site from important industry vertical associations (if you’re an airline or hotel, for example, get a link from a travel association of which you are a member) or related government sites. This will help improve your link popularity as these types of sites are viewed as very credible by search engines.

4. Public Relations

Many companies run extensive PR campaigns; however, most people overlook the link popularity value that could be gained from these efforts. Make certain to put your website’s URL on all press releases. This way when a release is picked up, your website will gain an additional link from a good source. It is surprising how many links can be garnered through leveraging the value of the public relations materials you are already producing.

3. Avoid Link Farms

Link farms are nothing more than a site or series of sites that link to many other sites. Link farms rarely have significant credibility (a high number of votes) to pass to your site, and are viewed by some engines as “spamming” – for which your site may be penalized within the search engines.

2. Directories: Yahoo!, About.com, LookSmart, Open Directory

Your listing in these major search directories is an excellent way of improving your site’s credibility. Search engines view these listings as credible because they have been reviewed by human editors at the specific directory. Getting even one listing for your site in each of these directories will aid your quest for improved link popularity and increased credibility.

1. Be Careful About Where Your Site Links: Your Reputation is on the Line

Placing a link on your website to another site is your way of endorsing that site. If you endorse a site that has been banned by search engines or is viewed as utilizing questionable search engine optimization tactics, then your site could also be penalized by the engines. Make certain that you know where your site links and are comfortable with having your site’s reputation judged partly by their activities.

Bonus: Diversify Your Inbound Link Destinations

Most sites devote all their attention to driving links to their home page. This hurts your other key pages. It is not realistic to get links to all pages of your site; however, pick out your top 5 pages and focus all the above activities around those main areas of your site.

Remember that improving your website’s credibility is an ongoing process, not just a one-time project from which you can reap ongoing benefits. Follow the best practices outlined above and that will allow you to be more effective in boosting your site’s credibility. Additionally, that will lead to improvements in online visibility and bring you more visitors from search engines.

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The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: June 2004, Volume 3, Issue 2

Top 10 Best Practices for Building Your Site’s Link Popularity

The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
June 2004, Volume 3, Issue 2