CONNECTIONS

–Vinh Bui, WebMaster

Part Five: Planning & Implementing a Linking Campaign

In previous articles, I’ve introduced what to do at the beginning of website construction and, most recently, how to write copy for your website to help “tweak” search results in your favor. This time, I want to talk about invitations…invitations to your “house” — otherwise known as links to your website.

Link building is a way to market your site…a way to build traffic and get noticed among the gazillion other sites out there fighting for a share of the internet pie. It’s a little like sending out invitations to a party on your website…and throwing in votes of confidence to the search engines. There are a lot of theories and methods out there using links to build traffic to your website, but I want to start with a few of the tried, true and tested methods.

The “Billion Dollar Idea”

Anybody heard of Google? Show of hands. Google was started by two Stanford students a while back who had a rather simple idea. In the academic world, researchers submit papers which introduce their particular approach to solving a problem or their fresh ideas on a specific subject. In these papers, the researchers also cite the work of their predecessors in the field. Research papers are judged by many factors, e.g. quality of citations, relevancy to current research in the field, originality and thoroughness of the ideas presented. Bottom Line? If your paper explores the relative intelligence of Chimpanzees and you refer to the existing work of a famous biologist (perhaps debating his/her ideas vs. your own), then your paper will have a better chance of getting noticed by the faculty. The more famous the reference, the sharper the notice.

What does all of this have to do with Google? I’ll tell you. Google employs an algorithm that factors in the same sort of judgement variables as the academic world. Google is the faculty of the world wide web. Google differentiated itself from other search engines by incorporating more variables by which to judge websites – thereby enhancing (and dominating) an already taken-for-granted feature of other websites…the search engine.

They took something that’s been around forever, and used it, along with many other factors, to judge what websites pop up as the result of certain searches. Linking to other related websites is like name-dropping…or citing relevant research in your arena…so the better (and more relevant) the website you’re linking to or from, the better Google grades you with its search engine.

All Links Are Not Created Equal

When all is said and done, there are primarily three kinds of links – and the first kind is by far the best:

1) One-way links to your website from another site. These are the links that have the most influence with search engines. Google views each one-way link to your site as a vote in favor of the legitimacy of your website in your particular market.

2) Two-way links from another website to which you also link. Google views two-way links as simply “link swapping” — exchanging links for the manipulation of search engines. Two-way links have very little sway in search rankings.

3) One way links from your website to other related websites. These can help a little bit, but the end results are negligible. Anyone can link to related content that’s out there on the world wide web, but it’s much more difficult to accumulate links going to your website.

Hooking Up With “The Popular Crowd”

Search engines count all inbound links to your site as “popularity votes.” It is therefore very important to find complimentary, targeted, industry-specific links from sites, communities, and portals relative to your site. This shows that your site is relevant and useful in its category, which in turn leads to increased link popularity and ultimately, increased website traffic.

The more influential, relevant and well-liked the website linking to you, the more weight Google gives that link –and the better the grade you’ll receive in the search rankings.

However, with search engines, it’s not enough to be popular. It’s far better to be the right kind of popular. You have to be popular with those interested in what your website is selling.

In the next issue of Connections, we’ll go in-depth into how to start link-building, where to start and what your focus should be when developing your site popularity. See you then.

Vinh Bui is a webmaster in Los Angeles, CA. His firm — Omnipresence Web – designs high-value, search engine-friendly websites for all manner of client and purpose – including online marketing (SEO and SEM).

626.429.9407
vinh@omnipresenceweb.com
www.omnipresenceweb.com (new website coming soon)

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