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Your Ranking in Google -
Solicit Valuable Links to Your Web Site
Ask Susan - Tip of the Month
April 2005
How do you improve the rankings of your website in Google?
Just ASK-SUSAN:
I
will be teaching this, and more, at a Continuing Education
Course "Increase Website Leads & Sales"
#22597 at Central
Oregon Community College in Redmond, Oregon April
21st and 28th from 1:00-4:30. I hope that you will be
attending.
Last month we looked at Key Phrase Research to
refine the list of key phrase ideas. This month we'll
look at getting other websites to link to yours. Inbound
links are important because:
- Search engine spiders (computer programs) use links
to find new website pages and add them to their database.
- They also view inbound links like referrals and
if your website has "referrals" from trusted
websites, the search engines will rank your website
higher.
- The search engines look at the words in and around
the link from the referring site to determine the
subject of your website.
You will be spending time and effort to obtain links from
other websites so it is important to pick the links that
will help improve your rankings the most.
What is a Link?
A link is a set of words or a graphic (image) on another
website page that represents a page on the same website
or on another website. When someone clicks on the words
or graphic the other page is displayed. It may be displayed
in the same browser window and overwrite the first page
or in a new browser window. The name of the new page is
stored in the code of the first page and is typically
not visible to the visitor.
An inbound link is a link on another (referring) website
that links to your website. It may link to any page on
your site.
Checking for existing inbound links:
Which websites are already linked to your site and what
do they say about you? You may be surprised.
On Yahoo.com enter: linkdomain:www.your-domain-name.com
-site:www.your-domain-name.com. You will see a list of
websites that have links to your website. Click
on them to visit the site and see what they say about
you.
Where to start getting links:
The most important places to get links are the major directors:
the Open Directory (dmoz.org) and the Yahoo Directory
(dir.yahoo.com). Click on the "suggest a URL"
or "suggest a site" links and follow the instructions
carefully.
Because these listings are reviewed by a person, the search
engines know that the description and link accurately
describe your website.
Other ideas for links:
- When an article is published about you (or by you)
on the Web ask them to add a link to your website
at the end of the article.
- Professional Organizations typically have websites.
If you are a member, be sure you are listed in the
member directory and consider advertising on the site.
This includes the Chamber of Commerce.
- Members of your networking organizations may be
interested linking to other related businesses.
- Your suppliers or customers may be interested in
linking to you.
- If you provide interesting content, other websites
will link to you to share that content with their
readers.
- Pay for links on local directories. Do a search
on your key phrases. Some of the websites listed
will offer you a link for a fee. If you pay for a
link be sure to check your traffic logs to see how
many visitors you are getting from that link. Then
you can determine if it is worth the fee.
- For other ideas, use Yahoo to see who is linked
to your competitor's websites.
The links to your website must:
1) Be from websites that are currently indexed by the
search engines. If you can't find that website through
a search in Google and Yahoo, they may be classified as
spam and you do not want to be associated with that site.
On the other hand, they may just not be indexed yet, which
will not help your ranking.
2) Contain one of your key phrases. The search engines
look at what the referring website says about you to
determine what your website page is about. They use this
information to determine the ranking for specific key
phrases. When the inbound links use the key phrases of
that page of your website it improves the search engine
ranking of that page for that key phrase.
Requesting links:
When you would like a link from another website, ask
and do the work so they will be more likely to comply.
- Search the referring site to determine where a link
to your site would be appropriate.
- Decide what you would like the link to say.
- Write the request specifying the page, the placement
and the wording of the link.
- Provide your URL in the same format for each request.
http://your-domain-name.com may be regarded as a different
page by the search engines from http://www.your-domain-name.com
or http://www.your-domain-name.com/
In May we'll look at what changes are needed on your Web
site to rank well in the search engines for your selected
key phrases.
Best Regards, Susan Hankins
Next article
First article in this series
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