Which Links to Focus On

After submitting your site to the OPD, Yahoo, and any other specialized search
directory and portal in your industry, the next order of business is to start asking for
links on other websites. The majority of links that point to your site should be from
other business websites similar to yours. If you provide interesting, useful, and timely
content on your site, others will be compelled to link to your site.

Your ongoing objective is to obtain the highest number of “high-quality” links as
possible from other sites. Just remember to exchange links with sites that offer
related or complementary products and services to your own.


Best Practices and Tips
Although the blanket statement of “get as many links as possible” applies in general,
here are some tips and best practices for prioritizing your link exchange efforts:

• Only exchange links with sites that are relevant to, similar to, or are in the
same or a complementary customer market as your own business.

• Start by looking at other sites that are listed in the OPD and in Yahoo under
the same category as your site. These make great sites to start focusing on.

• Do a search in Google and see what the top 30 sites are for your top keyword
phrases. These are either your competition or prominent complementary sites
to your own. Brainstorm other products or services that your customers may
also find useful.

• Focus first on getting links from sites with a PageRank (PR) of 4 or higher.
Links from sites with a PR = 3 or less won’t influence your ranking negatively,
but you probably won’t be getting an appreciable boost from Google unless
you have a large number (more than 100 or so) of these.

• However, don’t discount the power of even low PR sites directing traffic to
your site over time. Today's PR = 3 site could be tomorrow's PR = 6 site, and
vice versa. Don’t fret over the PR of the site, remember this is a long-term
continual effort on your part to get more links!

• Your best links will be from sites that have a large number of incoming links
themselves and that also have a relatively small number of outgoing links
(such sites are called authorities). Just make sure these sites are relevant to
your theme or keywords.


• Always try to get your keywords included in the text of your links. Have “Link
to Us” code to make it easy for others to simply copy the exact link code you
want used.

• Try to get your link on a page that is as close to their home page as possible.
A link is less important (has less PR) if it is buried several levels deep. For
example a link on, http://www.acme-house-plans.com/links.htm is better than
a link on http://www.acme-house-plans.com/Links/SectionA/links.htm.

• Always include a link to your site in your email “signature” line when posting
on forums, blogs, newsgroups or discussion groups, when submitting articles
to online publications, or when sending out newsletters. Content that you
write and send out has a way of being posted on a web server somewhere.