A couple of days ago, we featured an article that discussed some tips and hints for conducting a successful link building campaign. The first article featured some excellent information from Greg Boser. With part 2, I am going to discuss some of the tips that were offered by Michael Palka from Ask Jeeves and Matt Cutts from Google.
One of the sticking points of Michael’s presentation was the concept of communities. This is not referring to forums or web rings. What Michael meant is trying to ensure the links that are pointing to you are relevant and subject specific. He stated that the links are the basis of the Ask/Teoma algorithm. The implication is that community-based links may be considered more relevant by the Ask properties. This thought was reinforced when he said that being in the same subject validates the link.
Another tip that Michael offered concerning link building was trying to attain links that go to your site’s deep content. Don’t just settle on links to your homepage. With strong content, Michael believes you establish yourself in your community and therefore, acquiring links would be less difficult. The theory is that with good content, people who interested in the subject will WANT to link to your site, deep content included.
There are other areas to consider as well. Michael stated that seeking inclusion into directories, like DMOZ, could be valuable. However, I’ve read in more than one place that directory submission can be a waiting game. But with Michael’s advice, it would seem like they are worth the effort. Also, if you are considering link exchanges, Michael suggests creating a page that contains your exchange policy.
Michael also offered some tips on things to avoid when building links. First and probably most obvious are link farms. These sites are heavily into the black hat SEO and by linking to them, you can find your site penalized and/or banned. Plus, in the case of the Ask/Teoma algo, the links obtained from these farms probably won’t be that valuable unless they are relevant to your site’s subject. He mentioned to avoid anything that would artificially boosts your search engine ranking. Things like this are a quick fix, and they have a way of blowing up in your face, search engine-wise.
He also mentioned the obvious, like avoiding links to anyone that employs spam techniques like doorway/cloaked pages and pages that contain invisible links.
In the first part of this article, I mentioned that Greg said to avoid reciprocal linking, although, I didn’t offer any reasons why. Michael expanded on this thought, as did Greg in another session. Reciprocal links, unless they are part of your “community”, will lack authority and diminish the importance of the link.
Greg’s advice concerning reciprocal links was along the same lines. He believes that there are more valuable things to exchange than links, which would probably be RSS feeds and things he mentioned in the first part of this article. Like Michael, Greg believes that most link exchanges are done with sites that have no relevance to yours. They both feel that you should have a legitimate reason for having a link. Having non-relevant links plays into the concept of artificially boosts rankings. If you have a number of links that are in no way relevant pointing to and vice versa, these actions can cause the search engines to “red flag” your site. Which is something that is obviously to be avoided.
I was meaning to include what Matt from Google offered in this session, however, I have run a little on the longwinded side. Therefore, I am going to extend this article into a third part for your reading pleasure. 🙂 If you have any questions or thoughts about this subject, please share them in the WebProWorld forums.
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
