Search Engine Optimization: Natural Linking Strategies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to influence the search engines. Some search engines react to certain strategies better than others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article.

However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most if not all search engines. And let's face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.

So, what is this article about? It's about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly 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 usually will employ to increase their website value in the eyes of the search engine.

They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not 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 it naturally.

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 free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.

Now 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 traffic 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 traffic is just fine and it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give those inbound links very much weight 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 you inbound links varied. It isn't natural to have every website that links to you to have the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be the sites 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 spam sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP's from being cluttered.

Seven Simple Ways to Optimize Your Site for the Search Engines

Would you love to know the secrets of search engine optimisation? Here's a seven step guide to improving your ranking in the search engines.

First you need to find what people are looking for when they visit your site. Researching what actual words people type in to search engines is vital, these are your “keywords”.

Do your research on your keywords using Overture and Wordtracker. Overture will tell you how many people are searching on particular words or phrases. Wordtracker gives you an idea how much competition there is for those keywords.

Once you have your list of keywords, then you are ready to optimise your website. I say keywords as, with increasing competition on the internet, you are more likely to have success with keyword phrases or a group of keywords, than with just one keyword.

There are just seven easy steps:-

1. Name your site appropriately - if your site is about cat food, then include the keywords “cat food” in the title of your site
2. Ensure that your keywords are included in the page title
3. Add a Header tag using H1 tags
4. Use your keyword in the first line & last line of your content
5. Add an Alt Tag to your pictures which includes a description of the picture and includes your keywords
6. Ensure that your keyword is included in the outbound links from your site, an easy way to do this is to link the page back to itself.
7. Sprinkle your keyword a couple more times throughout your text and ensure that you have at least 250 words on the page. If you can't write this much, then write an introduction and then add a free article from one of the Article Directories, such as Ezine Articles.

If you include most of these on each of your pages, you'll find that you should move up in the search engine rankings over time.

All of these methods are what is called “on page” optimisation.

You can also optimise “off page” by building links to your website, using one of the many link swapping sites available.

You can also create quality links to your site is by leaving comments when you visit other people's blogs. When leaving a comment, ensure that the “name” you leave includes your keyword, where possible, and a link back to your site. For example, you could leave a comment from “Jo @ Cat foods”, linking back to your website address. If you're not sure where to find relevant blogs, either type in your keyword and the word “blog” into any of the search engines, or visit Blogger . com and run a search for your keywords.

Another great way of creating links to your site, is by writing and submitting articles to sites such as Ezine Articles.com ensuring that a link to your own site is entered in the Resource Box.

You may not see immediate results from your efforts, but with patience you will find that you see more visitors coming to your site as your rankings in the search engines improve.

You can find out more about starting and running your internet business, visit Start your own online home business.

This article was submitted by Jennifer Carter, why not build links to your website today.