SolveYourProblem
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series
What's The Real Value of
Quality SEO Link Partners?
As
you already know, good link partners are vital to the
growth of your website. Without good link
partners you won’t be ranked highly in the search engines,
and you won’t receive the traffic you need to gain new customers
and make new sales. Building high-quality links to your website
helps it to succeed.
Websites
that maintain good incoming links will get many targeted
visitors from their link partners. These link partners
are also a good source of information and can offer value
for the visitors that come to your website more often. The
idea behind link partners is to find web sites with complementary
content so that you enhance your web site. For example, if
you sell computers, it wouldn't be a bad idea to link to
a site that sells printers.
Linking
to your competitors is much more dangerous. The
fact of the matter is that when you link to your competitors
you are handing them your business. They may be handing some
of theirs back to you, but the trade off simply isn't worth
it. If you are in a situation where it is your product or
theirs, do not link to them. Aside from the obvious issue
of losing business to their site, you may even lose the returning
link if you don't keep an eye on it.
When
dealing with link partners, there’s virtually no point
unless you get reciprocal links. These links make your website
look good, as well as getting you targeted traffic from users
clicking on the links. When you are optimizing your site
for key words, however, it is important to link to sites
that provide more information regarding the content that
you have provided. In cases like this, the link is already
helping you. If you get a returning link in addition it's
like killing two birds with one stone.
With
good-quality incoming links, you will benefit greatly
from the increased traffic to your site. Most major search
engines’ rankings are at least partly based on the number
of quality links pointing to your website. Google, HotBot,
AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi and more all use link popularity
in their formula for calculating rankings.
The value of your link partner's sites will be very important,
as many of the search engines use this in determining how
relevant your site is to the terms that are being searched
on. A site with a page rank below three generally isn’t worth
exchanging links with. Then again, if the site is on its
way up, it might be a good idea to get in on the ground floor.
If you are curious as to whether a site is going to be accumulating
a higher page rank in a short period of time try going to
http://www.iwebtool.com/rank and punching the site’s URL
into the “backlink” tool or the “page rank predictor.” These
will show you how many links the site has going to them and
will let you know what the page rank could be within the
next three months.
You
must always keep an eye on the value, and use value-for-value
exchanges only. Make sure that your link doesn’t get removed
from any sites you link to, and remove your own link to them
if it does. Many people will agree to link with you and then
remove your link after a week or two. If you leave your site
linked to them, then they’re the only one benefiting.
Good
link partners are hard to find, and it will take some
time for them to respond. You may have to contact them more
than once, and probably won’t take you seriously if you just
ask them to trade you links. It is important to provide them
with information relating to your company and let them know
why your link will be worth while to them. If you are serious
about SEO, you will be able to let them know that you expect
your page rank to explode within the next few months and
you may be able to accumulate links this way.
It’s important for to make
sure that you links are checked on a regular basis. Of course you don’t have much control
over the incoming links, but you can still do whatever you
want with the outgoing ones. You should immediately remove
any links that don’t work, as they can and will bring your
search engine rankings down.
By understanding how link partnering works and maintaining
good quality links on your website, you can increase your
targeted traffic and improve your sales. After all, isn’t
that the whole point of having an online business? Just remember
that your website, like any other business, takes time and
effort to make it succeed, and any little way you can speed
up the process is good – as long as it’s not against the
rules, of course.
