In my previous write-up, I discussed how linking past the homepage is an extremely important aspect of any link campaign. In this portion, I am going to focus on additional strategies and tips, which were provided during the Linking Strategies portion of the Chicago SES conference.
Editor’s Note: Looking for a better way to link things together? Express your own thoughts on linking strategies on our exclusive SES:Chicago forum at WebProWorld.
Greg Boser of WebGuerilla.com offered a number of tips that can help you acquire quality links to your site. For instance, it is important to research which sites are succeeding, search engine-wise, in the field you are targeting.
The obvious way to do this research is by using the various search engines. Conduct the necessary key phrase searches and see which sites are ranking well. In a previous session, Eric Ward furthered this thought by suggesting you contact these companies about exchanging or acquiring links.
Another area Boser recommended making good use of alt attributes on image links. Place the anchor text of the link in the alt tag. Google and other engines will recognize the anchors when the images are spidered. Also, if your site employs RSS feeds, Greg also recommends integrating the CaRP script. According to the site, the CaRP script will “convert RSS feeds into fully customized HTML & display them on your website.”
Software developers should also submit their products to the various software distribution sites. These sites will provide a link back to the developer’s site, something that is obviously desired by webmasters. These tips provided by Greg can go a long way toward improving a link acquisition campaign.
Additionally, the Q and A session provided a few nuggets of valuable information, while also shedding light on how these SEM providers actually feel about certain search engine features.
First off, if you would like to perfrom a backlink check to see which sites are linking to yours, to a man, the panel suggested not using Google to do so. The feeling is Google’s backlink checking feature is about as accurate as the PageRank score on the Google Toolbar. If you would like to perform such a test, the panel suggests using Yahoo, which is known to show much more accurate results.
Concerning the PageRank green bar score, Boser indicated the score users see is actually over 3 months old… making it not a very accurate tool if that is indeed the case. SearchEngineWatch’s Chris Sherman was even more direct calling the Google Toolbar PageRank score “fiction”.
The theme I took from this session is that deep linking is imperative and quite beneficial, search engine-wise. One last piece of wisdom I will leave with comes from the esteemed Mike Grehan: external links to other sites, reciprocated or note, are not a bad thing because they tell the engines what “area” your site would like to be apart of. This plays directly of the information given in the first linking session: link out to experts, hubs and authorities. Doing this can “get you admitted” into these circles… provided your content is worth linking to.
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
