Optimize Your Site For Google With Links

Google as well as other major search engines such as yahoo and MSN all look at how many links your site has in order to determine its importance. This is also what determines your ranking.

Not all links have an equal value. What determines the value of the link is its relevancy to the page it is linked to. The more relevant the page is the greater the value of the link. If not just the page, but the whole site is relevant the link is even more valuable.

How to get relevant links to your site.

Reciprocal Links.

Reciprocal links were once of real value. Today they do not have the value they once had. It is still good to use them providing the site you are linking to is relevant to your industry or business.

Article Writing.

This is one of the best ways of creating links back to your site. This can have a viral effect as webmasters take up your article and post it on their site or send it out in a newsletter. Articles you submit must have a link back to your site. Most article directories allow you to place a link in your bio section. There are hundreds of these article directories that you can post to. Here are some you must make sure to include: EzineArticles.com, ArticleCity.com, and GoArticles.com.

Link Farms

If you come across a link farm go the other way. A link farm is a site of scrolling pages with countless links. These links are bad. They can actually kill your rankings. They are really part of a spammer’s network. Never link to any of these sites as it can downgrade your ranking with Google.

Directories

Links from directories can help significantly. Directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo and other reputable directories can greatly help you in your rankings. If you can get your site into DMOZ you will reap the benefits. The difficulty is getting it included. Search for the best category and submit your site every 4 - 6 months until you are listed.

Yahoo directory is a little easier to get into but not painless. There is a yearly charge of $299 to be listed in the Yahoo directory. Google sees Yahoo directory as an authority and this is very helpful in building your ranking.

One other thing that is very important is links anchor text. What is this? These are the words that are linked to a hyperlink. For example; To download this product clicks here. The click here is the anchor text. It is not wrong to have “click here” it is appropriate in certain areas. If you were to search the keyword “click here” you will find Adobe to be the site listed for that keyword. This is because there are thousands of sites that point to the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

So now when you use anchor text be sure to use keywords you are optimizing your site for. So even though “click Here” is appropriate at times, try to use your keywords as this will greatly increase the value of the link.

This of course is just a few of the thing that will help to increase the ranking of your site with the search engines.