Thinking about Linking – Tuesday Tips #3
Today’s edition of Tuesday tips is especially cool (for me at least). Here in South Africa it’s a public holiday (or bank holiday as some call it) and it’s also my birthday.
So , tip #1 – Have your birthday on a public holiday. Trust me on this one, it’s a good tip 
Today I’m going to be talking about linking for a bit. Now, as always, these tips are here to help but we can’t promise overnight success, it’s just some things you need to do in order to get the big internet ball rolling. If you have any tips or tricks or advice of your own to offer, please drop us a comment on this post.
If you’d like to check out your own page rank, hop over to the page rank checker and have a look. Don’t worry if you’re site is still ranked very low, you’ve got time to build your site up.
Search engines use a closely guarded set of rules to rank and judge websites. Google’s scoring system is called Page Rank, so the higher your popularity, the higher your Page Rank will be. One of the deciding factors for Page Rank is linking. A link is created when one blogger directs readers off to another blogger’s website. Those blogs are now linked. It’s the blogosphere’s equivalent of saying hi, and like a wave it doesn’t cost anything so don’t be selfish with your link love.
Blogs are about conversations, it’s not a one way street. Linking helps keep the conversation alive by pointing people in interesting and fun new directions.
Now, when you link to another blog or site, the first thing that you need to do is decide which text to link. The text that eventually becomes the blue underlined link is called Anchor Text. It’s your way of giving search engines a clue about where you’re linking to, so try and be descriptive and close to the subject matter. There’s a pretty good post on anchor text here. Granted, this is more for the page that receives the link, but you can also use this when linking internally. So if you’re going to link to one of your old posts, be sure to use descriptive anchor text to let search engines know what its about.
One of the best ways to advance your link popularity is to offer quality and informative content to your visitors and hope for natural links. If they find the information interesting enough, they will naturally link their blogs to your own. Search engines are not just looking for the number of links that point to a website. The most important aspect of the process is obtaining quality links.
Link building is the practice of encouraging other websites to link to your own website. If other websites are linking to your website, your link popularity will increase, search engines will deem your website important, and in turn, you should receive more traffic from them.
So, to very briefly sum up today’s tip
- Use descriptive anchor text in your links, especially when linking to posts on your own blog.
- Share the love – don’t be shy to link. Th more you give, the more you get.
- Create linkable content. If it’s good, others will want to show off the fact that they know where the good content is at.
As always, apply liberally, spread evenly and your mileage may vary so play around with the tips and see what works for you.
Till next time, keep on blogging.
Abraham van der Linde said,
Wrote on June 16, 2009 @ 15:38
Nice Post.
One question. Does the links from the comments also count as linking to or from other sites?
Lester Hein said,
Wrote on June 17, 2009 @ 09:24
Well, that depends on the blog that you’re leaving the comment on and how they have the comments section set up.
If the blogger has what’s called a “no follow” rule set for rules on comments, then search engines won’t follow the links in the comments. This is done so that spammers don’t hammer you by posting loads of comments and creating a mini link farm on your blog.
Wordpress has “no follow” enabled on blogs by default but it is possible to disable it by fiddling in the source files of your blog.
Abraham van der Linde said,
Wrote on June 17, 2009 @ 09:51
Thanks for clearing this up for me.
I guess I need to go and revise my blog then.
Calvin said,
Wrote on June 18, 2009 @ 00:15
Nice one man, however my worry is all these SEO plugins that add automatic no follow to all links linking outside your blog, this often happens when u find out that a certain blog or site has linked to you but also has the no follow attribute on the anchor tag
Lester Hein said,
Wrote on June 18, 2009 @ 09:39
At the end of the day I guess it comes down to individual preference. I have no problem giving link love from the comments section, but if it comes at the expense of being hammered by spammers and bots, then I can understand why authors would prefer to use the no-follow rule
Fatai Adewunmi said,
Wrote on June 22, 2009 @ 12:47
Nice post, but one question I have is, is links from article directory not useful when it comes to link building?
Lester Hein said,
Wrote on June 22, 2009 @ 14:39
@Fatai I think that article directories do have their place, but there are few things to consider when submitting your site.
Firstly, check to see if the article directory is using a no follow link on their submissions. To do this, you’ll need to view the source code (ctrl+u in Firefox) and find an outbound link. If they have no-follow on their links, then stay away.
Secondly, check the page rank of the directory that you’re submitting to. If the page has a low rank, it will not be worth it to add your content. I would say that a directory with a PR of 4 or higher would be worth the trouble. Low PR directories might not do much for your ranking but might be worth it in the traffic that that they send you. You’ll need to play around a bit and see which directories work for you.
The third point to consider is that the directory might end up outranking you for your own content. You could argue that this will send traffic back to you, but personally I would rather have the traffic and the links from other bloggers sent directly to me.
Lastly, it is a lot of work. Submitting your content to one or two directories won’t cut it. You’ll need to build up a list of directories you think will give you some value and then submit your content to all of them. Article directories are not without value and many people use them to good effect, but don’t expect miracles from this type of link network. You’re much better off focusing on getting organic backlinks based on the merit of your content.
I hope that this helps,
Lester
Fatai Adewunmi said,
Wrote on June 22, 2009 @ 21:09
Your nothing hold back reply have made my day, because before now my taught and believe was that article submission is more valuable than any other links method. Thanks for this information.
Hiking Guide said,
Wrote on June 23, 2009 @ 14:23
Thanks for this information, I will use it on my blogs for sure!
Simone Abrahams said,
Wrote on June 24, 2009 @ 11:56
Lester jy’s die beste
SEO has sooo many facets and I’m truly grateful for the Tuesday Tips. Hope to see more of them, keep ‘em coming.
General Tips for easier blogging – Tuesday Tips #5 | Afrigator Blog said,
Wrote on June 30, 2009 @ 09:06
[...] can often trump awesome SEO (search engine optimization) skills. I’m not saying throw the SEO tips out of the window, but you know what I [...]
satrap said,
Wrote on November 16, 2009 @ 07:02
Thanks for the post, i enjoyed reading it. blogging is not as easy as many think it is, it’s hardwork. any how thanks.