Each of
the four linking strategies has specific
descriptions that can be summed up as:
1. Reciprocal Linking = Site A links to
Site B, Site B links back to Site A.
2.
One-Way Linking = Site B links to Site A.
3. Multi-Site Linking = Site A links to
Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to
Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be
3..N number of sites involved.4. Directory Linking
= Site Directory A links to Site A.
That seems simple
enough, but it takes time and effort to perform
all 4 strategies and most website owners aren't
willing to spend the time or don't have the time
to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to
be one of the highest priority tasks that you
need to address, just after Order Processing and
Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without frëe
traffïc from the search engines, other traffïc
generation strategies that usually require
payment must be engaged.
Nöw doing the 4 strategies above is great, but
it gets even harder because you have to do it in
a way that doesn't trigger the search engines to
enforce a penalty upon your website. No one
except the search engine engineers know all of
the exact penalties, but we have some good
theories for some of them.
The first is the
rate at which links are created. There is a
certain threshold for creating links that is too
fast. It's possible that the threshold is a
sliding scale and is related to the age of the
website according to the engine. For example, a
young, low-traffic website should not normally be
getting 1000 links a month whereas an older
website that gets a lot of traffïc could be OK
to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in
your linking strategies make sure you keep this
in mind, especially if you are thinking about
buying links.
The second is that
having a link to every site that links to you
will likely reduce the value of the links. In
other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal
Linking, you will likely move up the SERP's
(Search Engine Results Page's) but you won't
reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture
of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to
the engines.
The third is
having all inbound links to your site on
"linking" pages will make those links
less valuable than having a natural link on a
contextually relative page for a percentage of
the inbound links. The higher you can drive this
context percentage, the better your website will
rank. These types of links are often some of the
most difficult links to generate an exchange for
because it requires more time and effort for both
website owners.
The fourth is to have links inbound from all
different ranking sites. If all you have linking
to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites, then you are
likely to be sending the message that you
purchased your links and that is not natural to
the engines. Some would argue that purchasing
links for driving traffïc is just fine and it
is. However, you should not expect the search
engines to give those inbound links very much
weïght when calculating your SERP positions. It
is significantly more natural for you to have a
large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a
decreasing number of inbound links as you move up
the page rank scale (0 - 10).
The fifth is to have
the text of your inbound links varied. It isn't
natural to have every website that links to you
have the same text on the link description. The
natural tendency would be to have a certain
percent be the site's name, but after that it
should be a wide variety of description. Your
link text description is a key factor for how
your site/page will rank, so make sure that you
keep that in mind as you specify your preferred
link text description on your website.
Finally, it would
be best for a good percentage of your inbound
links to appear within the text of a page that
appears natural for the reader of that site. And
for those links to not all point back to the home
page of your website. It's most natural for a
good high quality link to appear in the text of a
page and have it point internally within your
site.
So, when you begin
or continue your SEO activities keep all of these
things in mind and don't be impatient. Impatience
could incur penalties or worse. Your website
could end up in the "sandbox". It is
rumored and becoming more concrete that Google
supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites
are put in until they have aged to a point that
Google no longer feels that they are being
manipulated. Many of the search engines use
similar protection schemes to eliminate sp@m
sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP's
from being cluttered.
About The Author
Chet Holcomb of InternetPromotions.biz is a successful marketing
expert, providing advice for web marketers and
webmasters on how to promote your website, or
product using marketing tools that work.
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