SEO - Natural Linking Strategies

SEO - Natural Linking Strategies

by:
Chet Holcomb

Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely
profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There
are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to influence the search
engines. Some search engines react to certain strategies better
than others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they react
to. To document all of these things would require a significant
number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this
article.

However, there are a number of things that can be documented that
will work for most if not all search engines. And let's face it;
there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful
and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google,
Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are
responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.

So, what is this article about? It's about what you can do as
a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly
accepted practices of linking to other websites (outbound) and
getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically
4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase
their website value in the eyes of the search engine. They are
reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory
linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single
strategy is the right answer - sure it will help your SEO but
it won't be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all
4 techniques and to do it naturally.

Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions
that can be summed up as:
1. Reciprocal Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B links back
to Site A
2. One-Way Linking = Site B links to Site A
3. Multi-Site Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B links to
Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site
A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.
4. Directory Linking = Site Directory A links to Site A

That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to perform
all 4 strategies and most website owners aren't willing to spend
the time or don't have the time to spend on it. As a website owner,
SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need
to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer
Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic
generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.

Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even harder
because you have to do it in a way that doesn't trigger the search
engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except
the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties but
we have some good theories for some of them.

The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain
threshold for creating links that is too fast. It's possible that
the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of
the website according to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic
website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas
an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get
1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies
make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking
about buying links.

The second is that having a link to every site that links to you
will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if
all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up
the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page's) but you won't reach
your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies
will appear more natural to the engines.

The third is having all inbound links to your site on "linking"
pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural
link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound
links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better
your website will rank. These types of links are often some of
the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it
requires more time and effort for both website owners.

The fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking
sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites
then you are likely to be sending the message that you purchased
your links and that is not natural to the engines. Some would
argue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine and
it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give
those inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERP
positions. It is significantly more natural for you to have a
large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasing number
of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 - 10).

The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. It
isn't natural to have every website that links to you to have
the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would
be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but after that
it should be a wide variety of description. Your link text description
is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make sure
that you keep that in mind as you specify your preferred link
text description on your website.

Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound
links to appear within the text of a page that appears natural
for the reader of that site. And for those links to not all point
back to the home page of your website. It's most natural for a
good high quality link to appear in the text of a page and have
it point internally within your site.

So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all of
these things in mind and don't be impatient. Impatience could
incur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the "sandbox".
It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly
uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they have
aged to a point that Google no longer feels that they are being
manipulated. Many of the search engines use similar protection
schemes to eliminate spam sites and manipulation sites to keep
their SERP's from being cluttered.

About the author:
About the Author
Chet Holcomb of http://www.internetpromotions.bizis
a successful marketing expert providing advice for web marketers
and webmasters on how to promote your website, or product using
marketing tools that work.


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