Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between asmall, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnetwebsite. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, toinfluence the search engines. Some search engines react tocertain strategies better than others. Some even haveconflicting strategies that they react to. To document all ofthese things would require a significant number of pages andresearch that goes beyond the scope of this article.
However, there are a number of things that can be documentedthat will work for most if not all search engines. And let'sface it; there are really only 3 that make a difference betweena successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the bigthree: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in anygiven month are responsible for over 90% of all internetsearches.
So, what is this article about? It's about what you can do as awebsite owner that will influence the search engines usingcommonly accepted practices of linking to other websites(outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you.There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usuallywill employ to increase their website value in the eyes of thesearch engine. They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking,multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner shouldnot think that using just a single strategy is the right answer- sure it will help your SEO but it won't be the Best answer.The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do itnaturally.
Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptionsthat can be summed up as: 1. Reciprocal Linking = Site A linksto Site B, Site B links back to Site A 2. One-Way Linking = SiteB links to Site A 3. Multi-Site Linking = Site A links to SiteB, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site Dlinks 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 performall 4 strategies and most website owners aren't willing to spendthe time or don't have the time to spend on it. As a websiteowner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks thatyou need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillmentand Customer Service. Without free traffic from the searchengines, other traffic generation strategies that usuallyrequire payment must be engaged.
Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets evenharder because you have to do it in a way that doesn't triggerthe search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. Noone except the search engine engineers know all of the exactpenalties but we have some good theories for some of them.
The first is the rate at which links are created. There is acertain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It'spossible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related tothe age of the website according to the engine. For example, ayoung low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot oftraffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progressin 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 youwill likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, ifall you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move upthe SERP's (Search Engine Results Page's) but you won't reachyour sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategieswill 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 naturallink on a contextually relative page for a percentage of theinbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage,the better your website will rank. These types of links areoften some of the most difficult links to generate an exchangefor because it requires more time and effort for both websiteowners.
The fourth is to have links inbound from all different rankingsites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sitesthen you are likely to be sending the message that you purchasedyour links and that is not natural to the engines. Some wouldargue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine andit is. However, you should not expect the search engines to givethose inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERPpositions. It is significantly more natural for you to have alarge number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasingnumber of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 -10).
The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. Itisn't natural to have every website that links to you to havethe same text on the link description. The natural tendencywould be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but afterthat it should be a wide variety of description. Your link textdescription is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, somake sure that you keep that in mind as you specify yourpreferred link text description on your website.
Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inboundlinks to appear within the text of a page that appears naturalfor the reader of that site. And for those links to not allpoint back to the home page of your website. It's most naturalfor a good high quality link to appear in the text of a page andhave it point internally within your site.
So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all ofthese things in mind and don't be impatient. Impatience couldincur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the"sandbox". It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Googlesupposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put inuntil they have aged to a point that Google no longer feels thatthey are being manipulated. Many of the search engines usesimilar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites andmanipulation sites to keep their SERP's from being cluttered.
About the author:James Mahony is the founder of Search Mama, a sitededicated all things about Search Engines and The Domain Tycoons aone stop guide to domain names
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