Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Inbound Linking Strategy

What is the best way to do an inbound link campaign? Inbound links and inbound link campaigns are the number one way to get a good ranking within Google and can be compared to a vote for your site. With inbound links there are 3 attributes that you should implement to maximize the effectiveness when directing a link back to your site. For sake of explanation we are going to assign each of those 3 attributes 1 point each.

1. Do the inbound links contain the keyword that relates to the page it`s linking to? For example, if the link is going to point back to a page on your site about tennis shoes, the link text should read something like "New Brand of Tennis Shoes", basically the words "tennis shoes" should be in the title of the text link. In essence what happens is the search engine reads the title of the text link, then follows the link back to your site and reads the title tag on the page it`s linked to, and says "is this page what the title of the text link said it was"? If it is, then you get a point, so you`re at 1 out of 3.

2. Do the inbound links reside on a web page that is relevant to your site? For example, if your site had sports shoes for sale, putting a link on a site that has a lot of information about sports, or a blog that dealt with sports would be a good thing. Where as, if you were to put a link on a site or blog that dealt with something irrelevant, like pottery, the relevancy would not be powerful. This is one of the many dangers of using a "link farm" to put links out there for your small business, they just scatter the links around and rarely hit a site that is relevant to your site and actually hurt your link popularity. So keep the links that point to your site located on other pages that are relevant to your site. If you do that, you get another point so you`re at 2 out of 3.

3. Finally, does the site that the inbound link resides on have good page rank in itself? Granted this is not something that you can completely control, yet it still can be monitored. You will have to put less inbound links out there if your inbound links reside on highly trafficked and highly ranked sites, and more inbound links if you use sites that are less trafficked. Keep in mind both #1 and #2 above need to take place for #3 to matter. If you get the inbound links pointing to your site located on higher trafficked and respected sites you can give yourself 1 point for a total of 3 out of 3.

Note: Once you get inbound links, it only helps you as long as the link is active on the other site, so they are more of a short term boost unless managed well.

Inbound Linking Strategies

-------------------------

CEO/Lead Designer Blue Wave Design Studio www.bluewavedesignstudio.com

Good post Bill, certainly things everyone should keep in mind as they evaluate their linking strategy.  And you`re right that it`s an absolutely vital component of any site marketing campaign.  I would really stress that point about garnering links from related sites - every site reveals thematic elements about itself to the major search engines, and what they want to see is sites that are in a related sphere to your own linking to you.  A bad link to your site can be worse than no link at all.

-------------------------

chuck fuller

Hi

I am new on Start-up Nation and I have already found some awesome info, like this one!

thanks

-------------------------

With warm regards
Madeleine van Rossem
http://www.ezsplashpage.com/mvr

Glad to hear it Madeleine - if you have any specific questions related to this topic that the community can help you with, don`t be shy!   We all benefit from having those issues discussed here.

-------------------------

chuck fuller