Category: Links
If you have a website, you need inbound links. Directories provide links - web hosting provider explains.
Listings in quality directories are valuable to website owners for two reasons:
Not every directory will provide you with traffic and SEO benefits. Your site will be relevant to directory visitors only if the directory is well organized and attracts people who are interested in the directory topics. You won't get SEO benefits if search engines see the directory as a bad neighborhood.
Directory types can be grouped by cost and by content.
Cost: directories can be free, with a one-time fee, or with a recurring (monthly or annual) fee. Free is good only as long as the directory itself is good; there's less incentive to the directory owner to maintain the directory well. (Revenue from advertising on the site provides some incentive.) Paid directories are more likely to be well maintained.
Content: directories range from directories with categories for just about any topic (for example, DMOZ and Yahoo Directory) to niche directories for specific content areas. You can find regional directories, commercial and industry directories, blog directories, article and script directories, and directories for almost every topic.
The quality of a directory depends a lot on the screening standards used when evaluating link submissions (and if they are screened at all). Look for these characteristics in quality directories:
Links from directories that are the opposite of the above won't help your site and may hurt it. Search engines penalize sites that appear to exist primarily for search engines. Your site will look bad to people as well because of the company it keeps. Quality sites aren't listed with sites that don't function properly or are lacking in useful content.
Chances are that your site can be listed in several different types of directories. One way to find relevant directories is to find out which directories your competition is listed in. Another way is to search for "directory" plus keywords for your website content area.
For general directories, DMOZ is a good starting point. Numerous other sites use data from DMOZ, so a DMOZ listing leads to other listings.
Consider how your site can be listed in different types of directories. If it has an address at the site, it can probably be listed in regional directories, even if it serves an international audience. Look for directories for any associations that you belong to. If it has a blog, it can be listed in blog directories. There are probably directories for the type of business (if it's a business) and for the content area if the site has articles of interest to the public.
When you find directories with categories suitable for your site, assess the directory quality. Does it have the above characteristics of quality directories? Look at several categories, read the descriptions that go with the links, and follow the links. Read the submission guidelines and terms of service.
Submit your site to directories only after it's been tested and is ready for the public. Quality directories have people check sites before accepting their listings, and yours won't be accepted if some pages appear to be incomplete or links aren't working. Aside from that, you'd be making a bad impression on the people who followed links to your site.
Once your site is ready to submit to directories, start searching, assessing, and submitting. Include directories when you do ongoing link building as part of SEO.
You can’t swing a comatose web head without running into the stalest advice in all of SEO. Get quality, inbound links to improve site ranking with search engines - web hosting provider explains. Yawn! What else ya got?
Okay, inbound links work in a lot of ways – creating credibility, trust and the chance for designation as an authority site so, yeah, inbound non-reciprocal links help, and there isn’t an SEO pro or newbie who doesn’t know it.
What you don’t hear a lot about is on-page links – links seen on every page of a web site. Links that connect visitors to other site pages.
Redirects are not held in high regard by search engines. The long-held impression that redirects are black hat tactics is still there. And, there are hackers still trying to hi-jack sites using invisible, on-page redirects. As soon as a visitor accesses the hacked site, s/he is redirected to another site page or even web site from the link provided in the SERPs. Redirects, such as a 301 (permanent redirect) or 302 (temporary), are cause for suspicion and can mean instant death for a web site.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for redirects. A blog, for instance, may send out a conformation of post receipt before redirecting the visitor to the blog and post itself. This kind of redirect is beneficial to visitors, providing useful and reassuring conformation and therefore, not all redirects are bad.
Here’s the deal: if the redirect has a valid purpose – one that an SE bot understands – redirects aren’t a problem. In fact, on-page links are nothing more than redirects and your body text should use them to help visitors navigate.
It’s easy to optimize a site page for bots. The SEO industry still contends some search engine weighting factors, but there are many that enjoy almost universal acceptance by SEO pros.
That’s why some site owners optimize a page for bots and bots only. 5% keyword density, perfect title and alt tags, perfectly balanced informational content – the kind of content bots like to see. This page is then buried deep in the site with lots of links to more user-friendly pages within the site.
The deep site page, perfectly optimized for bots, won’t be attractive to humans (necessarily) with keyword dense text, no graphics (bots don’t read graphics files) and with a perfect title tag. This is a high ranking page according to metrics analysis because the content is information, as opposed to sales copy and again, it’s bot-o-mized in the page’s HTML.
Once the visitor reaches this highly optimized page, he or she is automatically redirected to a page that’s designed to appeal to humans rather than bots. These automatic redirects are usually permanent (301) and susceptible to bot interrogation and even page penalty.
Use links to redirect visitors. Links are, in fact, redirects and they can be used to help visitors find the information, goods or services they need, and help index a site faster and with greater accuracy. If you do it right, you can get all desired pages indexed on the first pass by a Googlebot. For human visitors, it’s all about on-site links placement that strikes a chord or hits a nerve and generates a response to take action.
Example: A fire extinguisher site publishes an informational piece on home safety, providing good, quality advice. Quality, high-ranking content. This page is one of the high-ranking, deeply placed pages that draw visitors in. Now, instead of using automatic redirects, the savvy site designer will use contextual links to trigger a response from the site visitor.
Within the article, of course, is the recommendation to keep a fire extinguisher in the house. (Completely off the subject, you should have a fire extinguisher on hand. It saved my house.)
Anyway, the article provides a link in context to (1) generate a response and (2) compel action to that response. So, to move the visitor off the highly-ranked page, a short paragraph, based on the keywords entered to access the highly-ranked page, is used. For instance:
“Fire danger in the modern home is a reality, putting you and your family at risk every day. A small, properly-charged fire extinguisher can save your home and the lives of your loved ones.”
This deeply-embedded link then takes the reader directly to the products page for home fire extinguishers. The highly-ranked informational content draws attention from bots. The links draw the attention and direct the flow of visitor traffic once the site has been accessed, leading visitors to the precise page they need.
A visitor can reach a well-connected site any number of ways – via directory, <title tags> indexed as individual links in SERPS, links from other sites and, if you’re doing everything correctly, maybe even some organic traffic.
Obviously, the more access (doorways) to a site the better. However, how a visitor got there is indicative of what the prospect is searching for. If the prospect reached the site through the Directory of Insurance Brokers, that visitor may or may not land on a home page depending on the query words used in the directory search.
“Low-cost high risk car insurance,” as the query phrase, displays a link with that exact headline. The searcher clicks on the top-ranked link, reads a short “Let us show you how to save $$$ on high-risk pool insureds, and a click takes the visitor to the car insurance zone page where additional links continue to direct the pathway taken by the visitor, i.e.
“High risk insurance will cost more depending on just how complicated your driving history is.” <link to information request, rates chart or contact information>, (especially if you’re a local broker looking for local business).
These on-page links direct visitors to precisely the information they’re looking for. These links also provide pathways for search engine spiders that are trained (programmed) to follow links.
Links direct spiders to the far corners of a site, deep into the corpus. However, it’s just as important to make it clear what pages are off limits to Googlebots and other snippets of spidering programs.
Spiders don’t just crawl. They follow the mathematics within the algorithm that directs their movements. They follow commands as well.
You can designate certain pages as <nofollow> to keep spiders out of your private business, or keep bots from indexing pages that are in beta at the moment and not quite optimized for indexing.
Or, if you want to close off large sections of a site to spiders, create a robot.txt file that identifies the pages of a site that are NOT to be indexed or accessed by spiders. The fact is, Googlebots are unleashed on any site visited by a user with a Google toolbar so there’s nothing you can do to keep bots from crashing the party.
A robot.txt file, placed in the site’s root directory, will make it clear to spiders what they can and cannot see. It’s the safest way to keep the relentless, “Terminator”-like Google bot from reforming from liquid into a dangerous cyborg once again. And believe it, bots “…will be back.”
Each page of a site should be analyzed from both the bot and the human perspective. Use embedded links instead of automatic redirects to avoid raising the suspicions of bots who think redirects are “icky.”
And place these on-page, intra-site links for maximum effect – either at the point when user need is identified, at all entrance points to the site, on the order form and the contact page.
On-site links are invaluable for helping visitors and helping bots. And together, that’s very helpful to the success of your site.
Visit our web hosting blog again soon for more interesting, relevant and in-debth information about website success!
Click an icon and bookmark this post.In-bound links of the non-reciprocal kind continue to fascinate SEO and SEM professionals. Many site owners, newbies and long-timers, have followed the axiomatic tactics for link building – from hosted content to outright begging. Web hosting provider explains tactics of link building. (PLEASE link to my site.) “Desperation does not a connection build.” I think Calvin Coolidge said that or maybe I read it on a webmaster blog.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you checked your Alexa data and discovered that a couple of higher ranking sites linked to your site, asking nothing in return? Wouldn’t it be nice to attract inbound links without spending hours of each day tweaking, trying to find that perfect combination of keywords and content density?
It takes a lot for a higher ranked site to link to a lower ranked site. The owner of the higher ranked site may actually slip in search engine rankings, unless search engines recognize the value and quality of your site.
Just like Mom said, “People judge you by your looks.” So, if you have an attractive site with all the latest in site features, Flash movies, transparent mouseover flyouts and an animated banner, all in appropriate colors and fonts, you at least look the part.
Yours will be a reflection on any site linking in so you have to look…at least as good as the quality competition in your market segment.
Can you write? Even a little, if it’s in your area of expertise?
We’ve mentioned content sydicators often in the Website Source blog and, indeed, these sydicators are extremely useful in building in-bound links. But wait. You can also post articles, newsletters, industry information and other content, free and downloadable for the asking, from your own site.
Site owners need to fill pages and though syndicated content won’t win any friends among traveling Googlebots, it will keep a site fresh for return visitors so other site owners will be glad to post your musings on metaphysics in the metadata age (well, some will).
To take best advantage of these give-aways, embed text links back to your site. Don’t go overboard. A couple over a 600-word piece is about tops. Also include an “About the Author” biography, short – no more than three lines even if you are the most vibrant character you know – with another back link.
Syndicated content is great. But when you syndicate through goarticles or helium, you’re creating site popularity for goarticles and helium, not for your site. If you can post a couple of short 600-word pieces a week on the area of your expertise, you’ll have a library of more than 700 articles and blog posts free for download in your archives.
Vary your topics and include content for all ranges of expertise – from rookies to authorities. Don’t forget to add FREE CONTENT to your HTML keyword and description tags for the bots.
Advertise your content give-away on dmoz.org, SEOmoz.org, your website and through links created through other guerilla channels like Facebook and other sites that survive on user-generated content.
There’s plenty of free stuff online. Counters, trackers, free press release software, data feeds, calculators and other useful programs. You can pick up rights free digital gizmos at freesticky.com. Other sites giving it away are send2press, allheadlinenews and freeware.
These freebies should be relevant to the topic of your site and promoted though blogs and other viral marketing outlets like Facebook. If you give it away, people will hook into your freebie gizmos for use on their own sites, each time creating a link back to your site. Now, site owners come to you. Your links begging days are over. (Whew!)
Post on your own blog. Be controversial. Be provocative. Incite a web riot. It’s so cool. Your blog should lead to long threads of pro and con opinions. Topicality should have a long shelf life.
If you post on a blog about a news blip in last night’s broadcast, it’s got a 24-36 hour shelf life, unless it’s about Brittney Spears and then it’s got a shelf life of approximately a millennium (at least so far) so show your authority with posts that’ll still have a readership 36 months down the road. Man, content is dated quickly webwise.
Sole source. That’s what this content is called because it’s available from a single source – your website.
This content should be informational, authoritative, accurate and 100% reliable. Let’s say you’re an optometrist with a couple of brick and mortar outlets. Great, and congrats.
Use your expertise in eye care to create informative content: Choosing An Eye Care Professional; Time for Another Eye Exam; Don’t Forget Eyesight Health Month. If you develop quality content for download, supplemented by copyrighted content available only on your site, site owners within your area of expertise will appreciate the free content and visitors who reach your site via non-reciprocals will appreciate the sole source content.
Keep it hype free and make it printer friendly.
Think of these steps as viral links building. It works in precisely the same manner as viral or word of web marketing. If your site offers something useful to other webmasters free, you’ve made a webbud who looks upon you with favor. If you also provide great, informational content for consumers and end users, sites will link into yours without any links begging.
Provide benefits to site owners and their visitors and your site becomes a self-propagating links magnet. And connectivity is one of the four pillars of site success describe in a previous post.
Connect up the easy way. Take the high road. The others will follow your lead. The result? A dynamic website with ever-changing content, free give-aways and other useful stuff – printable coupons, printable articles, gizmos and gadgets.
Come and get it.
Visit our web hosting blog again soon for more relevant business articles for your website.
Click an icon and bookmark this post.
If you’ve been in the search engine marketing business for more than five minutes you know the importance of links – in-bound links pointing to your site. Search engine spiders like sites that are plugged in and linked up. In fact, you can buy links at auction (there are several large link auction sites, the biggest being LinkAdage) where you can create auctions, bid on links from higher ranked sites and create some web buzz about your site that keeps showing up as a link off sites with the same topics.
Starting an online business is a time-consuming chore for many people. It’s the adventure of a lifetime for others. If you don’t have the time or inclination to start from Point A, but would rather start at Point B, you can buy existing web links from highly-ranked web sites – everything from a newsweb with a page rank 8 (PR8 and excellent) to a blog with a traffic rate of 35,000 hits a day.
One important point to bear in mind during links auctions. There’s no deal you can’t walk away from so don’t be afraid to walk.
First off, if you are planning on placing a bid on 1,000 links it’s nice to know something about the businesses behind those links. Now, because the sellers of these links are webmasters themselves, you can be pretty sure you won’t link to a bunch of porn sites when you buy 100 links targeted at hardware shoppers. Even so, do the spade work and check on who you’ll be linking to should you win the links auction.
Now, not all links are created equal and, in fact a bunch of low ranked links farms can pull a PR8 right down into the gutter so conducting research is essential before buying or bidding on a links bundle. 1,000 junk links won’t do you as much good as 100 quality links. And the only way you can determine the quality of the links you’re buying is by checking the seller’s website on Alexa (see below) to see who’s hooked in. Buy quality links, even if you get fewer of them.
You can also bid and buy a link on a homepage with 95,000 natural backlinks. Your association with a site that maintains that many backlinks connects you to those 95,000 online clients. Instant, online networking.
Be careful. The buying and selling of site links completely lacks any kind of legal oversight so getting ripped off is an unpleasant possibility, unfortunately. After all, we’re dealing with something as ephemeral is back links to your site and that’s a lot different than buying a house that you can actually stand in.
The best way to avoid rip offs is to work with a reputable company – one that’s been in the web links sales business longer than last week. Serious digital brokers perform their own due diligence before posting an offering so you can assume some protection going with a reputable company.
Other protections you should take and research you can do:
Buying links can turn a PR2 into a PR6 or PR7 if you go with a reputable links auction house (Google it for options) – one with a good history. It doesn’t take long for bad news to spread across the web so, with a bit of research, you’ll become adept at buying useful and productive backlinks – links that generate real site traffic, FAST.
It’s a growing industry and as more and more web users buy online, it’s only going to grow faster and bigger – much bigger. So, if you’ve got the capital, buy 100 quality, embedded text links.
Then watch your traffic grow.
Click an icon and bookmark this post.
If you’re just starting out in the world of e-commerce and search engine marketing, you might not recognize the importance of site links – connections from your site to other sites. However, links are an important weighting factor as far as search engines are concerned, which is why building links with other sites is such an important part of your new job. This article is provided by your web hosting company and will address some of the more successful link building strategies.
The number one most visited site on the world wide web is Yahoo.com. How do we know that? Search engine rankings and Yahoo ranks at the top and Google, itself, comes in at number three.
Search engines, like Google, Inktomi (used by MSN) and Yahoo (inventor of the search engine) use complex mathematical formulas called algorithms to rate and rank each site. These algorithms are based on factors such as keywords, freshness of content, number of visitors each day, page views and other aspects that define a good site from a less good site.
If you remember that the purpose of any search engine is to deliver relevant results based on users’ keywords, you begin to understand how search engine designers construct their weighting formulas. A site that puts up new content each day is deemed “more relevant” by search engines than sites where the text never changes. Of course there are exceptions (you can tell Google beforehand that the text on your site will never change) but search engines and search engine results pages (SERPs) are critical to big time success in the fastest, most competitive market ever.
Search engines like sites with links. Why? Because links give search engine users options to continue their searches. If visitors don’t find what they’re looking for on Site A, maybe they’ll find it on a link to Site B and so on. So, as a new member of the e-commerce community, you might assume that the more links you have on your site, the more search engines are going to like you. Not necessarily true.
Site links are rated for quality. For example, if your site is dedicated to helping college students with financing, and you have a link off of you home page to a local lube shop, you’re going to get stung by the first search engine spider that stops by. The reason is, the link has no relevance to the stated purpose of your site – college financial aid. So, this completely unrelated link to the lube shop doesn’t provide the search engine user with a means of continuing his or her search for information on financial aid.
Bottom line? Unrelated links will lose you points with search engines. Links to sites related to your site will gain you points – some more points than others.
“You link to my site and I’ll link to yours.”
In a nutshell, that’s what a reciprocal link is. A straight swap. But even here you can gain or lose search engine points. For example, if your entire home page is nothing but links – even links to related sites – search engines label you a “links farm” – a site set up for the sole purpose of presenting links that earn the site owner money for every click they deliver. This is called PPC or pay-per-click marketing and it’s a very common tool used by many sites – in moderation.
The thing is, keep the number of links on your site under control. Weed out the links that aren’t being used, and again, remove any links that don’t help site visitors in their search for products, services or information.
Reciprocal links can also help you grow your site more quickly – especially when you’re able to link to sites with a higher page rank (PR) than yours. Search engines give each site a ranking. A site with a rank of 2 would have less importance than one with a PR of 6. The higher the ranking the better.
In the case of reciprocal links, the company you keep does matter. If your little PR 2 site is linked to a couple of PR 7 or 8 sites, your site gains in prestige simply by the company it keeps. Search engine designers figure that if a popular site links to and recommends a smaller, less highly ranked site, that smaller site must be pretty good. After all, big sites are recommending that their visitors stop by your storefront.
The problem, here, is that site owners with big, on-line operations aren’t interested in linking to your new site. There’s nothing in it for them and they lose the respect of search engines. The fact is, getting hooked up to a site that ranks higher than yours is downright impossible – that is unless you give the site owner something else to make it worthwhile.
Solid gold in the search engine race. These are inbound links from other sites with no outgoing link from your site. That means that your site is so good, so complete, so everything, that other site owners refer their own prospects to your site knowing that they’ll lose some business.
And, if your site collects enough of these non-reciprocal links – especially from sites that have a higher PR than your site – your site is designated an authority site – one to which others refer their own customers. Indeed, non-reciprocal inbound links are solid gold, but how do you get them? Well, you can start by offering the site owner something extra for that inbound link.
“Yes indeed, step right up. We have the highest quality links for sale. Who’s going to be first in line!”
You can buy links from links brokers, but this strategy is becoming less popular as top search engines, such as Google, have announced that they are looking more closely at purchased links. Leading Google software engineer, Matt Cutts, even offers an option for webmasters to report paid links.
What do link brokers offer? These businesses hook up web site owners who want to link up – for a price – with web site owners willing to allow the link for a price. Sometimes it’s a flat, one-time fee. Other times, you pay by the month to have a highly-ranked site hook up to your little start-up.
In addition to brokers, there are also links auction sites. Site owners put up links offerings and these links go to the highest bidder. Simple. If you want a site with a PR of 9 to link to your PR 2 site, it’s going to cost you and you’ll be bidding against other PR 2 site owners. But money isn’t the only way to build links, thankfully, because most start ups operate on very little cash. So, how else can you develop reciprocal and non-reciprocal links?
This really works well, especially if you’re an authority on the topic of your web site and you can write fairly well.
In this case, you write a short article, between 600 and 1200 words, about the topic of your web site. Edit it. Proof it. Then post it.
There are lots of content syndicators on-line. For example, goarticles.com will be happy to take your content and post it for other site owners to download for use on their sites. But you get something in return for letting that site use your article. Part of the deal is that each site owner who publishes your article must include a link back to your site.
Website owners need content. Lots of it everyday. And these content syndicators offer up free content in exchange for non-reciprocal in-bound links back to you. Are you starting to get it? As more sites pick up your article (s) the more links you have pointing back to your site. And the more authoritative your site is in the eyes of search engine spiders.
Hosted content works in much the same way as syndicated content except you pay the site owner to display your article on his or her site. Why pay?
Syndicated content can be picked up by any site owner, so your article or analysis or whatever might appear on 10 different web sites at the same time. This is considered duplicate copy by search engines and, as such, copy that has less value than 100% original text. Further, with syndicated content, the link to your web site most often appears at the end of the article – an indicator to a search engine that this is probably syndicated copy.
On the other hand, with hosted content, your copy only appears on one site. In addition, you can embed links to your site directly in the main body of the article. These embedded text links are highly rated by search engines. Once again, make sure your hosted content appears on sites with a higher PR than your own. You’re paying for that space, after all.
Well, if you have a marketing budget, consider links buying as part of the promotion budget. Same with hosted content. If you can afford to pay the owner of a higher ranked site $100 a month for that in-bound link, it’s a quick way to gain the notice of search engines.
However, if you’re just starting out and money is tight, try article syndication to build inbound links. Also, visit webmaster sites and forums. There are always site owners interested in swapping links with sites that have the same PR – not as valuable as a non-reciprocal, in-bound links but valuable just the same.
The important thing is to get noticed by search engines quickly and links building is one of the best ways to do that. So whether you buy the links, pay for hosted content space or syndicate your articles, it’s key to get hooked up to other sites.
After all, isn’t that what makes the world wide web so strong?
Click an icon and bookmark this post.:: Next Page >>

This blog was created as a forum to discuss current website hosting, vps hosting, reseller hosting, ecommerce hosting and domain registration - the current trends that have an impact on webmasters.
:: Next Page >>
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| << < | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | ||
Search
Linkblog
Misc
Original template design by Francois PLANQUE.