Inbound Links and a Diversified Link Profile

Linking is a wide-ranging topic because there are many types of links, reasons for links, and because of the special relationship that exists between links and content.

Good linking relationships and practices are necessary in order to achieve superior SERP (ie. search engine results pages) results and desired web search visibility. It’s important to have a working understanding of all the different link purposes. The objective of this blog section is not to convey every single aspect of linking (ie. How to Link), the objective is to point out how linking relationships fit in to the broad picture.

Inbound Links

Inbound links are live hyperlinks published on other domains that lead direcly to your site. Common sources of inbound links are hyperlinks from websites published by other webmasters, web directories both paid and unpaid, blogs in the blogosphere, online press releases, article distribution services, newswire services, social media sites, Wikis like Aboutus.org, links that you initiate and links that other webmasters initiate voluntarily in seeking a reciprocal link exchange, and unfortunately in rare cases there can be malicious links that need to be uncovered and identified originating from from Black Hat SEOs that seek to damage your online reputation.

The link hierarchy concept places value on the different types of link building techniques.

One great source of BOTH targeted traffic and inbound links is Article Distribution Services. Writing good topical articles and publishing them in Article Directories is a solid strategy for linking. Our favorite article directories include: Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com, and Articledashboard.com. There are a multitude of worthy free sites to publish your relevant articles for your industry niche.

All Links Are Not Created Equal

Inbound links are needed in order to get your website spidered. I believe good inbound links provide more value than the results from submitting to search engines. You want links: from web pages with high Google page rank (PR), from web pages gaining PR, from web pages with as few outgoing links as possible, from web pages with similar topic content. You want links: with relevant surrounding contextual content with keyword anchor text. You want links from a site’s home page if possible, next in priority is from a site's internal pages. You want links from sites having good incoming link popularity and link authority - which creates for you a high link equity backlink! Site-wide links (ie. ROS, run of site links) from each and every page of a particular site leading into your site could well be seen as spam so this practice should be avoided. You want links pointing to your single top-level keywords pages, but just as important to move your site up in relevance you want deep links leading to your internal pages with your long-tail keywords which establishes a more natural appearing link profile.

With the right kind of good inbound link reputation links you will likely not need ongoing submissions of your site to the major search engines. I usually submit the home page one time to the major search engines and then never submit again. With good search visibility your existing content and fresh content coming online will be discovered naturally and indexed.

Diversified Link Profile

A diversified link profile is needed where your inbound links originate from five or more types of content (ieg. social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, blogs, other web sites, directories, articles, press releases, and RSS Feeds. By examining your competitors’ links in the your competitive analysis phase you can get a reasonable idea of your competitors' most valuable sources for links links as they're generally listed in order of priority in the search engine operators reporting results.

You can also set up your own Google Profiles page to add to your online visibility. We have set up a Google Denver SEO Consultants profiles page for example to help our link profile.

Examining Competitors' Links

Uncovering your competitors' web links is easily accomplished using the different SEO Tools and search engine operators that are free and easily accessible.

Selling SEO Services and Web Search Visibility

In order for the client to fully embrace web marketing via SEO it is useful to inform them generously on the various components and contributing factors of SEO, how they work together, how they impact a site, and what’s possible to achieve through a comprehensive SEO campaign initiated by experts. The better information a client receives in the Selling SEO Services front-end process the better they can make appropriate decisions and stay committed to the process. SEO is a process and not an event and clients should understand this -especially if they want to win. It is helpful to get an idea for the end result they have in mind and are willing to pay for in the SEO campaign.

One key concept for Web Search Visibility is in Social Media Marketing or SMM. Sometimes you just have to dive in. One example of SMM is in using the many online services to mash together the many options available which helps your Site Visibility.

Do You Want To Participate, Compete, or WIN?

For example does the client want to Participate, Compete, or Win, which basically comes down to working with the right SEO and then investing the necessary time and capital. Basic SEO services can definitely improve their web search visibility so they can Participate in the search query space on chosen keywords. More work is needed in order to successfully Compete with a higher level of expectation with other indexed sites already employing SEO experts.

For me personally, to Win means top three or four SERP position achievement on Google for high volume keywords along with consistent SERP results over a period of several months or longer. Given the correct information regarding SEO practice business owners can choose what they want worked on and the associated time schedule.

A few important questions to ask business owners are: how are you currently marketing your business; how are you currently using your website; do you know what keywords are delivering traffic to your existing site now; how important is it for you to market your business on the internet in the short-term, medium-term and in your long-term business plan; do you want both a PPC and an SEO campaign; and do you realize what is realistically possible to achieve through SEO? Well, we know what is possible, and what it will take. It shouldn't be necessary for an SEO to make claims or promises in advance on what SERP results a particular client will achieve; set realistic expectations together and then get the ball rolling and keep it moving down the field.

At the beginning of a project a business owner needs to weigh all the factors and make the key business decision as far as scrapping or reconstructing the old site or building an entirely new search engine friendly site. In some cases, especially where site architecture, URL structure and design has been poor, it could make sense and provide a higher return on investment by starting over.

Web Search Visibility

One major determing factor in the decision to reconstruct the existing site, or start over, has to do with their existing web search visibility. Quality of inbound links; search engine indexing; well organized and well written content; and link flow dispersing the link juice within the site will help determine the probability that existing or new blocks of content will be discovered by search engines and delivered to the eyes of visitors.

What you do not want at the beginning of any SEO campaign is to be saddled with multiple built-in limitations and constraints due to site design or problems such as crawling or spidering issues. Another key factor before starting any new client campaign is whether they compete locally or nationally or internationally, as that will drive the keyword plan, content strategy, and the linking strategy portions of the campaign.

Code to Text Ratio

One key element I examine when working to improve a website's SERP performance and search visibility of the individual web pages is the Code to Text Ratio. This SEO metric gives you the percentage of text on a web page counting as content that visitors actually see. For a web page to be relevant for search visibility for a keyword you need plenty of unique text -I shoot for around 30% text minimum.

Web Search Visibility with RSS Feeds

We're a fan of utilizing the free tools readily available on the internet for distribution of web and blog content. One effective web marketing promotion strategy is to not only create a business blog, but to distribute the blog in the form of RSS Feeds in blog directories and free RSS syndication services that are powerful and simple to distribute content that can be indexed and crawled by webbots automatically. We also regularly have the blog directories and other social media marketing promotion sites PING our blogs so the most recent blog entries can be crawled to maximize visibility and indexing.

Local Search

If your customer strategy is based locally then make sure you create an online presence in your local state and community. This is preferable for highly targeted traffic. Local search sites include Superpages.com, CitySearch, Yellowpages.com, and Local.com to name a few.