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Link Me Up Scotty!

Author: Nevil Darukhanawala




I am guessing you must be an avid Star Trek fan to have clicked on this title. Now while this article is not about reaching out and exploring the far frontiers of space Matt Calvert Salute to Service Jersey , reading it will enable you to build a link building strategy to leverage your content and website so it reaches the farthest corners of the Internet.





Statistics: comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)





芒鈧?Total internet audience 188.9 million
芒鈧?Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US alone
芒鈧?Facebook: 41.0 million
芒鈧?MySpace 75.1 million





Now with numbers so high (and rising at alarming pace), can you honesty tell me that you can reach your target audiences by setting up a great website or starting a blog? In advertising we are taught to reach out to the audiences (via television, radio, print, outdoor hoardings, online banners etc), but on the Internet one forgets it's as important to reach out through various sources and channels so that your target audiences can find you.





The search engines play a great part in assisting your target audiences to reach your website, but they have laid certain guidelines to follow. The two most important criteria for search rankings is valuable and unique content and number of quality inbound links to your website or blog.





So you have seo optimized all your web pages, have been spending late nights over coffee writing fresh and useful content (focused around your keywords) that pleases the users as well as the search engines, and yet, your rankings are not going any higher.





Well if the above scenario sounds familiar, you my friend are not leveraging your content and letting others know that your content exists. If your content is good, and you let people know of its location, they may give a link back to your site page so that their community can benefit from your valuable content.





However, this article is not about creating content or optimizing your content, but about getting others to be so bloody impressed with you and your content that they are willing (and may even request you) to link to your website or blog.





Why do search engines value these links?





Search engines assume that if another website (especially ones that are popular), or a bunch of users (like in social bookmarking communities) deem a site or page to be important, it must be!





So the number of quality inbound links to your website will affect your rankings, but the word "quality" is of more importance that the "number" of links.





So how do search engines define quality links?





Search algorithms as constantly changing, so one can only guess all the parameters and prominence given by search engines while defining link quality. But a few logical parameters can be adhered to.





1. If the source giving you the link is a trusted one, with high page rank and is popular, that's obviously counted as a quality link. But it does not help if you have a link from a site that has content and audiences that is not related remotely to the content you are providing. So it's important to get links from sources that are related to your content as well.





2. Another point is the link text (and description) that points to your website. The search engines check to see if the text used to describe your website speaks well of it. If the link text contains the keyword that you have used on your website webpage as well, you will get better rankings.





3. Diversity is other important criteria the search engines may be adopting of recent. Getting links from 1000 directories or 1000 article sites may not hold (and this is just my assumption) as much value as getting 500 relevant links from a mix of techniques like article submissions on sites like Ezines and ISnare, blogger reviews, video submissions sites like YouTube, social bookmarking submissions like Digg and Delicious, PR sites, web directories, discussion forums, blog commenting etc.





4. Stay away from reciprocal linking, in which two websites exchange links. There are many legitimate cases where two websites would need to link to each other, but search engines are generally strict when it comes to reciprocal linking and may treat that link as not valid.





5. Stay away from link farms and link exchange programs. Search engines deem links that are exchanged for no other purpose that to exchange a link as SPAM.





6. It's the content that will attract the links. So build the content, promote it well, and the links will soon follow.





Benefits of quality linking are many





1. Boost your website rankings
2. Increase the number of quality links pointing to your website or blog
3. Get increased targeted traffic from diverse websites and communities
4. Increase your online presence by reaching to various web and user communities
5. Its free advertising! So what are you waiting for?





In conclusion I will repeat an important point. Building quality links from a healthy mix of high page rank websites and communities (directories, vertical engines, article submissions, social bookmarking, PR sites, blog reviews etc) is as vital for search engine rankings, as is having a well optimized site with quality content that's updated consistently.





So what is your link building strategy and link building matrix?





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When US President Donald Trump takes the world stage at the UN for the first time this week, he was.