Increasing Quality Inbound Links

By Pandia Guest Writer Paul J. Bruemmer

Inbound links may increase your site's popularity among web surfers as well as search engines. But how do you get them? Paul Bruemmer gives some advice.

(June 21 2005) There are several ways to increase inbound links -- and also a few ways not to.

It's always a good idea to have quality links coming into your site regardless of the fact that it helps your search engine rankings. So your linking campaign can be dual purpose by bringing in more traffic while improving your rankings. Back in the old days, it was derigueur to request links. You can still do this today, but you need to be a lot more sophisticated about it.

Link Requests

When soliciting links, research your project well to learn which sites are the best targets for a link request. Another tip is to use the phone rather than email whenever possible.

Look for quality sites that don't compete with your own site but can complement it. Find these sites by doing a search for your own strategic keywords. Then weed out the competitors and locate the related sites to approach.

Explain your interest in their site and what they have to offer. It's very important to give them a good rationale for providing the link. If your site has quality content that complements theirs, chances are they might link.

Links from Search Engines and Directories

It goes without saying that a link from Yahoo and Open Directory are desirable for commercial sites (despite recent reports about ODP slowness).

Depending on your industry, there are also many vertical search engines and directories that can provide valuable links.

See Danny Sullivan's list of Specialty Search Engines to find such verticals as business.com (financial and business search engine), FindLaw (legal search engine), or WebMD (medical search engine).

Links from Newsletters and Discussion Threads

Yes, these links are good. Write an article for industry trade zines and get a link in your bio. Post on industry forums and get a link there. Keep active and seed those links, but only when you can contribute to industry knowledge and educate your peers.

Links from SEO Press Releases

One of the newer linking strategies is to gain links with search-engine-optimized press releases. SEO press releases provide opportunities for inbound link development when Yahoo News, Google News and major news search engines list your data online. This helps achieve excellent rankings within major search engines.

The link structure of a properly distributed "search optimized" press release also benefits your website when you issue a release because you are providing relevant information to those searching for news related to your industry.

It could be a prospect looking for industry info when researching a purchase or a journalist researching a story. At any rate, your company will be represented in the search results, which increases the relevant traffic to your site.

SEO Press Release deliverables include:

• 450-500 word press release; optimized for a core search term and 2 to 3 niche terms
• Release incorporates anchor text; based on search term associated with target web page
• You often have your choice of distribution
• Access to view statistics about how your news release performed over a 30-day period
• RSS feed and paid inclusion distribution

Prior to preparing your search-optimized press release, a qualified SEO technician conducts keyword research and planning. Using the business information you provide, the vendor can then make comparisons with your competitors and similar websites.

A weighted value is calculated for each keyword based on the number of searches over the past two months compared to its percentage of relevance.

Because the first step in optimizing a web page for search engine ranking is placing keywords in the Title, it makes sense to determine how many pages have been somewhat optimized.

A good vendor will perform an "InTitle" and "Title+Anchor" search at Google to give you an indication of the popularity of your various terms, comparing these results with WordTracker's KEI (keyword effectiveness index).

This research allows one to determine relevancy, evaluate competition, and add modifiers for providing you the best advice on selecting your best keywords and phrases. The vendor may also marry the Keyword List to a Site Review and consider your current content to make recommendations for overall improvement and performance. Benefits of an SEO Press Release

• Top rankings in Google News, Yahoo News and MSN news for targeted search terms
• New rankings in Google and Yahoo web search results, often first page results
• Coverage on hundreds of relevant web sites subscribed to PR Web's RSS feed
• Links from web sites that pick up your news release
• Help in building link popularity for your web pages
• Archived press releases to deliver long-term link value

Often, the vendor can provide you with a tracking report to summarize the rankings achieved in news and web searches. The vendor can also provide stats on top search terms for which a news release is accessed; page reads and downloads of a release; number of sites that carried the release as news; and number of links created back to target web page.

There are several such vendors, and currently I've been using SEO-PR. The oldest and most renowned firm is Eric Ward's URLWire.

Links You Don't Need

These are the types of links you do not need: