Almost weekly, I get emails from blog or web site owners that go something like this:

I am in the process of developing a more substantial online presence.  I noticed your blog and that it receives a lot of traffic, and am wondering whether you would be interested in a reciprocal link arrangement whereby we link to your blog and website and, in return, you link to our website on your blog.  Our site is at _____.   We will be adding a "Resources" page that will include links and brief descriptions of useful sites for bankruptcy information, and would include a reference to your blog on that page.

Here is how I read this message:   "Hello, you do not know me but I see you have an established blog that has been around for 5 years, appears regularly in the organic search results and has a high Google PageRank.  I have a new website that has a few pages of content and has not yet been indexed by Google, Yahoo or Bing.  I want you to give me a site wide blogroll link from your site to help put my site on the map.  In exchange, I'll put you on a "links" page on my site, when I get around to adding such a page.  I sincerely hope you don't know that "links" pages are ignored by the search engines, meaning that a link from a "links" page is totally worthless."

Not surprisingly, asking for a link from an established site when you have nothing to trade is a waste of your time and it is a waste of your potential link partners' as well.

Similarly, if your site still contains a "links" or "resources" page, you are shouting to the world that you do not know what you are doing and/or that your linking tactics are vintage 1990.   With very few exceptions, "links" pages have no search engine value.  Next time you see one, look at the PageRank indicator on your Google Toolbar (or at PageRankLookup) you can check for yourself.

So what should you do if you have a new site?  Here are a few suggestions that would work for me:

1. if you have another, more established site, offer a link from that site
2. offer to write an article for your target site – but make sure that your article has some relevant, meaty content.  If you really want to impress your target's editor, offer to write a second article that you will include on your site that contains a link back to your target's site
3. if you have friends or colleagues who have established blogs, ask if they will accept a post (written by you or by your target) that contains a link back to the target
4. offer to write an article for the benefit of your target for EzineArticles.com or another major article directory.  Even better, offer to write several articles for multiple article directories
5. offer to bookmark several of your target's blog posts on one or more social bookmarking sites.
6. offer to write reviews for Google local, Kudzu, Avvo if applicable
7. offer to pay for the link back to your new site
8. offer to distribute video content on behalf of your target on TubeMogul
9. offer to record and produce a screen capture video for your target
10. offer to translate (or have translated) one or more pages of your target's site into Spanish or another language
11. offer to write and set up an autoresponder series for your target on AWeber or Constant Contact
12. offer to buy 50 stock photo credits at iStockPhoto or another stock photo site
13. offer to locate 5 or 10 badges for your target's blog – badges are seals that look like awards that may help a blog's credibility
14. offer to record an interview with your target and to provide target publisher with the audio file

Generally, put yourself in the shoes of a busy blogger – what can you do to help your target blog publisher save time?  Any other ideas about what a new site owner can offer an established site owner to justify a valuable link?

1) Algorithm

An algorithm is a fancy word for “formula.” In this case, an algorithm is used by search engines to rank your site, by determining how relevant your site is for the people using the search engine. Factors including your web site’s content, keywords, and links pointing towards your site (aka inbound links or backlinks) are all used in the algorithm to calculate your location on the results page of the search. The more relevant the algorithm determines your site to be, the higher your site will be placed on the results page.

2) Page Rank

The value of your site is a calculation made by Google known as Page Rank. To calculate your Page Rank, which is measured on a scale of 0 to 10 with the average being 3 or 4, several factors are used. One of the most important factors in your Page Rank is the amount of one-way links (again, aka inbound links or backlinks) pointing to your site. A high number of links shows that other sites consider your web site to be a quality, relevant resource, and therefore Google should too. You can download the Google Toolbar to see your Page Rank by clicking on the link.

3) Link Popularity

It is not very well known that some types of links can help your search engine placement while others may actually hurt it. For example, a “reciprocal link,” which is when you link to a site and that site links back to you, is frowned upon by search engines. This is because people used to try and cheat the system by adding as many links as possible to improve their ranking. Search engines have become more intelligent, and their algorithms are able to ignore reciprocal links. The best kind of link today is the “one-way link” that I covered above under the Page Rank subheading.

4) Keyword Phrase

You could say “keyword phrases” are the new “keywords.” Because the internet has been around for awhile, most single word “keywords” have been used so much that they lose value. For example, if I wanted to learn how to poach an egg, I would search for the keyword phrase “how to poach an egg” rather than just the keyword “egg.” Searching for “egg” would produce thousands of irrelevant results. By using keyword phrases you can be much more specific about what your pages are about and cater to specific audiences. For more on choosing relevant keywords for your website, please click on the link to see my most recent post.

5) Site Structure

The way your website is organized, such as how the pages are linked together and the way your menu works, is referred to as site structure. Good site structure helps visitors move freely and easily through the pages and effortlessly find relevant and related content. The better your site structure, the higher your search engine ranking.

A few extra comments on Site Structure

Before I build a website, I typically try to outline the site structure. This involves determining what topics will be covered and how, whether there will be subtopics, how my readers will be able to access/view these topics, and what it will all look like upon first glance at my site.

For example, let’s say I want to build a site promoting a rock band. I may want to have a “home" page (or landing page), an “about" page featuring the band’s members, an “upcoming shows” page, a “downloads" page, and perhaps a “contact us” page. These pages may or may not have subheadings, and that is what I try to think about before I actually start working on the site. Then I think about whether the individual pages will link to each other and whether the individual pages will look different than one another. Adding a "blog" page may be another consideration. These are just examples of things to think about when thinking about site structure. After all, getting people to your site using the methods mentioned above is one thing, but getting them to stay is another. You want to make the visiting experience as intuitive as possible if you want great results.

Frequently, the email solicitation will state that your link has already been posted on the other web site, with a link that looks something like www.abcwebsite.com/links_2.html.  If you should happen to visit that page, your link will be there along with a few dozen other links that may or may not be in your business category.

My advice is to ignore these requests for link exchanges.

Years ago, the major search engines gave some credit to links on "link directory" pages on a web site.  Back in 2000 or 2001, a "reciprocal link exchange" might have some value to both parties.  Unfortunately, those days are over.  Search engines generally do not give any authority credit to a link that exists in a link directory – at least that has been my experience.

Link directories that exist solely to pass "page rank" or site authority defeat the purpose of a good search result – to indentify authority sites that provide topical and relevant information.  This bias against link bartering is why some search engines are punishing links sold by link brokers.  Take a look at an article by bodybuilder Mark McManus entitled "Google Slashes MuscleHack's PageRank."   Mark earned $18.95 by selling space on his blog to a text link ad company, only to see his ranking in Google plummet.   Mark happens to have a legitimate blog that contains fresh, original content that is frequently updated, yet he got slapped.  Take heed.

If you are going to "exchange" links with another web site, ask the other site's editor if he/she add an article that you have written to his/her web site.  The article you write should be topical and relevant and it should contain a relevant link text phrase back to one or more pages on your site.  You would never want to use "link here" as your link text.

At this point it does appear that the major search engines are still giving authority credit to "blogroll links" on blogs.  In theory blogroll links don't differ much from link directory pages on web sites, but obviously Google and Yahoo must see some reason to still consider blogroll links.  Don't be surprised if this linking tactics disappears at some point.

I'll post about some of the link building tactics that I use in a future post.  For now, however, don't waste your time or your site's credibility exchanging links with link builders who are using 10 year old tactics and putting links on link directory pages.

Louise – Dating website for the disabled

Louise, thanks for your question. Here are my thoughts:

Firstly, I think you need to recognize that linking is only part of the traffic puzzle. In a very basic sense, linking works because most of the search engines consider a site's popularity as an indicia of its importance. This same theory works in the legal arena and in academia. If a particular law case or a particular scientific paper is recognized as a primary source for ideas, then lots of other documents will reference that case or paper.

For this reason, the term "news" is associated with CNN, "click here" with Adobe, etc.

In my experience, simply exchanging reciprocal links does not really do much. If you think about it, a web site with 500 reciprocal links is not inherently important or relevant – most likely the 500 links are the result of the efforts of a diligent link exchanger.

To put it another way, the search engines look for artificial reciprocal link exchange practices and filter out those links.

That being said, it has been my experience that reciprocal link exchange does have some value – it will get you indexed by the big 3 search engines and it appears that it will get you up to a PR 4 on Google.

So, I still engage in some reciprocal or three way link exchange for that purpose.

If you do engage in link exchange, make sure to select three or four phrases that will be used as your link text. For example, when I referenced your site above, I called it Dating Website for the Disabled as opposed to www.soulfulencounters.com. Why? Because you want to associate your site with a search term. No one types in "soulful encounters" in the Google search box. But hopefully there is traffic on terms related to the subject matter of your site. "Dating website for the disabled" is an example of link text. Ultimately your goal is to associate several search phrases with your web site. That will improve the chances that your site will appear when those search phrases are entered into the search engine.
Search phrase (also known as "key word") research is really the starting point of your Internet business. You may have the best product or service in the world, but if no one is looking for it, your business will not succeed. So, before you spend any more time and money on promoting your business, you need to discover whether there is a market for your service and, if so, what terms are potential customers using to search for your service. Those search phrases ought to be your "link text."

I personally use three or four different link text phrases for linking purposes. The goal is to make my linking campaign look natural. In the real world, it is unlikely that every searcher will use the same three or four word phrase. You need to vary it a bit.

Five years ago, a simple link exchange may have done more, but now, the search engine algorighms see them for what they are – an attempt by web site owners and SEO companies to artificially inflate web site positioning. So, what do you do?

What I like right now are article exchanges. For example, if you wrote an article about dating issues related to heart patients, I could post that article as a link on the page of my Social Security disability resource site addressing how to win a cardiac impairment Social Security disability case.

Even better, I might add a paragraph or two to your article focusing on the disability component and now each of us has relevant, unique content. More importantly, this content is natural and logical and it very well may respond specifically to a search engine query on the subject. And what do the search engines want more than anything – relevant search results, not ads and search engine spam.

So, the bottom line is that if you want to use linking to build page rank and to generate paying customers to your web site, you need to find article exchange partners who will work with you in posting content.

Jonathan

[tags] linking, page rank [/tags]