Search Engine Optimization Rules

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The Vital Importance of Links

This is the second of three pages on Search Engine Optimization. To cover all the fundamental aspects of this subject, make sure you also read the pages on content and keywords (see links above). As this is an art related site, there are references in this section to art and artists, but the exact same principles apply to absolutely any website when it comes to search engine optimization.

Follow this link for more advice on Effective SEO Tools.

No-one outside Google fully understands all the ins and outs of how the Google algorithm works, and it is no doubt far from simple. However, it is known that when someone carries out a search on Google and it collates the results, it is primarily doing two main things.  It will first check the search term against all web pages in its index to see which are the most relevant and then it will rank these in order of ‘importance’.

The relevance can be judged by the words that the page actually contains, but the 'importance' of a website is judged by Google on how many other websites are linked to it.  Each link is seen as a vote in favour of the site. Some votes are worth more than others.  For example a single link from a large site that already has thousands of other sites linking to it is probably worth much more than dozens of links from sites that have little content and few links to them.  The other important factor is that the website linking to yours should be relevant to your own.  So if you are an artist, a link from another artist’s website should benefit your site more than one from a site selling thermal underwear.

The principle behind this is that if sites are genuinely useful and interesting, other sites will naturally link to them.  So even if your website is well designed with a logical structure and lots of interesting content, you will not rank high up on Google unless you have lots of links to your site from others.

Search Engine Optimization Rules - Link Exchange

The need for links is why many webmasters take part in link exchanging. This is a very widespread practice and one which has worked very well for my site, helping me rank in the top ten out of over three million for my main search phrase. The problems are that it is very time consuming (not least with artists as we are often such a disorganised bunch!).  The basic idea is that you build a directory of links to other art related sites, and find people with other sites that agree to link to you if you link to them.

There are other options available for getting links, but if you are an artist, I think link exchange is well worth pursuing.  Compared to some other fields of business, I have found that artists' websites are far more likely to actually have links pages and in general you will find it easier to get in touch with the person who can agree whether to exchange or not.

Search Engine Optimization Rules – Use Article Writing

Another way to get links is to write articles.  There are numerous article directories that you can submit articles to.  The principle with article writing is that you write an interesting article on some topic related to your expertise or area of work, and submit it to these directories.  You cannot write articles that directly promote you or your website, but attached to every article will be a little box for information about you, in which you can put a link back to your website.

One of the conditions of using these directories is that you make your article available for other web publishers who are looking for content for their ezines, blogs, etc.  So if someone likes your article, they can reproduce it in their newsletter or put it on their own website, provided they include your ‘author box’ with your link in it.  So for writing one article, you might publish it on six directory sites and have it reproduced another ten times by other publishers, all providing links back to your site.

Search Engine Optimization Rules – Get Links From Directories

One easy way to get links to your site without having to provide a link yourself is through submission to the many directories on the web.  There are some directories that definitely are very useful, but which you have to pay to be included in.  The main ones being Dmoz and the Yahoo Directory.  A link from these will certainly give your site a boost, but inclusion is not cheap.

There are hundreds of directories, some with a specific focus, such as certain industries or geographical locations, but most are fairly general.  The principle is that these directories provide categorised lists of websites and you just submit all the details about you and your site to these directories to have your link added to the relevant category.

Some directories are undoubtedly more beneficial than others, but even the ones that are not worth a great deal to begin with could increase in importance over time and provide a more useful link a few months or a year down the line.  You need to try to steer clear of any which are not manually reviewed and edited, or which do not have SEO friendly links.  The dodgy end of this spectrum that you should avoid are the automated sites known as ‘link farms’ which search engines do not look favourably on.

Submitting your site to directories is worthwhile, but tedious work and very time consuming.  Consequently there are many companies who will do it for you for a small fee.  If you go for a directory submission service, make sure you choose one that is submitted manually, as the ones that use automated programmes are very hit and miss, so why pay for it. An important consideration is that search engines are looking for organic growth of links, so you don’t want 300 links to your site suddenly appearing, which all say exactly the same thing. So choose a service that will allow you to vary the anchor text and submit them over a period of time.

Recommended Directory Submission Services:

To save you spending hours researching, the following two sites are among the most reliable and best value directory submission services from the vast choice available.

Directory Maximizer

A service that will manually submit your site to as many directories as you choose, up to a maximum of over a thousand directories. You can vary the anchor text and spread the submission out over a period of time. Excellent value at about 14 cents per directory. Flexible on packages, so you can spend as little as $5 if that is what you want. Check it out for yourself here.

InetZeal

Another manual submission service with prices comparable to Directory Maximizer, and the price drops substantially as you increase the number of directories you choose to submit to.  Have a look at their website here.

Both of these are excellent value compared to spending your own time doing this mind-numbing work. See also the information onSEO Tools, some of which also include keyword research tools.

Search Engine Optimization Rules - Organise Your Links And Understand PageRank

One indication of a page’s importance to Google is what is known as its PageRank.  While this is not a strictly accurate measure, it does give some indication of how a page is being judged by Google in terms of its importance.  There are various ways to find out the PageRank of your site, but the easiest is to download and use the Google Toolbar, which will tell you the PR of every page you view.

It is useful to think of links as either adding to or taking away from your page’s importance, or increasing or decreasing your PageRank.  A link from your page to an external site will ‘leak’ a little bit of PageRank from your page, whereas an incoming link will give you a bit of PageRank from the site it comes from.  This is also true of your own internal pages, so you should bear this in mind when you set up the structure of your site.

Your home page is your most important page, so you need to maximise your PageRank here.  Keep outgoing links to a minimum, and ensure that all your other pages have a direct link back to this page.

If you are going to pursue link exchange, then you should create a separate directory for your outgoing links.  Any page which has a lot of links to external sites and not much content is unlikely to rank very highly, so avoid using any of your main section pages to put your links on.  The best system is to have a main section page as your ‘links home page’ with links from that to all your different categories of links.  Use a separate page for each category of link.  Never have your links more than two clicks away from your Homepage though, otherwise it is not a very enticing prospect for anyone you wish to exchange links with.

When you are arranging links back to your site, you should decide how you want them to appear.  The most useful links in terms of SEO are text links, with the link itself coming from linked keywords.  For example, if your site is called 'davidjones.com' but you want to target people searching for 'landscape paintings' then you need to make sure the 'anchor text' (the text that actually carries the link back to your site) says 'landscape paintings'.

It was this technique which led a while ago to searches for 'worlds biggest failure' coming up with George Bush’s website.  That was the result of a co-ordinated campaign whereby lots of webmasters linked to his website using the anchor text ‘worlds biggest failure’.  So it works!

Because of the importance of anchor text, it is best to avoid using banners, though I can understand that artists in particular could favour a visual advertisement for their work.  If you do choose to use banners, then you need to ensure that the webmaster adding your link is told what to use in the 'alt text' section.  GoogleBot cannot see images, but it can read the alt text.  With no alt text, GoogleBot has no idea what the image is about.  The alt text needs to contain your most important keywords ('landscape painting' or whatever).

When you are arranging links back to your site, you need to bear in mind what GooglBot is looking for. Hundreds of links all saying exactly the same thing and pointing to your home page does not look like organic growth and natural 'votes' by other websites.  Vary the anchor text you use, and ensure that some links go to other pages within your site too.