How To Use Links To Optimize Your Site For Google.
Google as well as other major search engines such as yahoo and MSN all look at how many links your site has in order to determine its importance. This is also what determines your ranking.
The most important thing about links is to keep it relevant. If the page you link to is relevant to the content on your site this is good. If the site is relevant this is better. Not all links are created equal.
Here are some methods you can use to create links to your site.
Reciprocal Links.
They are not of the value they once had in determining the importance of your site. They are still good but you must make sure that it comes from a site that is on the same or similar subject to yours.
Article Writing.
This is the best way of creating links that can be viewed as very relevant. It is a long slow tedious journey as it means regularly writing articles and submitting them to article directories. These articles will link back to your site by leaving a hyperlink in the bio section. Most article sites will not allow hyperlinks in the body of the article. You can submit your articles to hundreds of article directories. Here are some you should submit to: EzineArticles.com, ArticleCity.com, and GoArticles.com.
Link Farms
Go as fast as you can away from these. Links to link farms can downgrade your legitimate links. Link farms are sites with scrolling pages of just links. They are viewed as spammers by the search engines. If you associate your site with them your site by association will also be viewed as part of the spammer’s network.
Directories
Links from directories can be very helpful in upgrading your ranking. This is especially so from such directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo. You can also look for other respected directories. Try to get your site listed with DMOZ. It can be very difficult but if you keep submitting it every 4 - 6 months. Search for the best category and keep trying for it.
With Yahoo it is easier to list your site but it will cost you. Yahoo charges $299 per year to list your site. The listing can be very valuable as Google looks at Yahoo directory as an authority.
Another important thing you can keep in mind with regard to linking is anchor text. Anchor text is the words that are actually linked to the hyperlink. Here’s an example: To download this product click here. The click here is the anchor text. If you did a search with Google using the words click here, you will find that that keyword points to Adobe Acrobat reader. The reason is that many sites point their user to this page to download acrobat reader for free as this is needed to read PDF files.
An anchor text link that uses the keyword or key phrase is far better. For example if you were targeting the keyword phrase; “low cost web hosting” You would anchor it this way: “to really benefit from our low cost web hosting here are some pointers” The keyword phrase we are targeting is our anchor text.
This of course is just a few of the thing that will help to increase the ranking of your site with the search engines.
