Improve your search engine rank with links

That's just not how it works… not even close!

Search engine optimization - the effective utilization of search engines to draw traffic to a web site - is something of an art. It is an ongoing, continuously evolving, high maintenance process that includes the customization of a site for better search engine ranking.

Once you have designed and built your website to rank well with the Search engines, what else can you do to improve your SEO ranking?

"The more links there are coming into your site, the higher you get ranked," explains Dianne Volek, CEO of InterComm South Africa. "An incoming link suggests that someone somewhere in the world found you interesting enough to link to! A site that has a lot of outgoing links is also highly ranked."

It is tempting to buy into the email deals offered from "webmasters" all over the world asking to swop links with you. Linking to these poor quality, desperate websites in Romania and Malaysia will quickly get you downgraded by with Google.

Accept links only after checking that the site exists, that the content is relevant to your industry and that the site is legal and appropriate. Google do not downgrade reciprocal links (I link to you, you link to me), but it does rank them far below geniune content links from newspapers, articles and other highly rated content.

Online Directories

Listing your website in key online directories is important. Two of the most important ones in South Africa are Ananzi and Aardvark. In both directories new listings are proofed by a real person to rule out spam sites so they both are considered very authoritative by search engine.

Directories in niche fields are also critical. InterCommerce allows you to list your own website - register for a username and password and then suggest a website. Do a google search for directories in your field, and then submit your site where its appropriate.

The following online directories have high page ranks and accept free submissions:

• Directory Quality Web sites
• Free Web Directory - TheShoppings.Com
• Toronto Cognos Developers
• free Directory submission
• Cultu UR Technologie Directory
• Top Ranking Directory

Publish authoritative articles online

High quality articles and informative press releases on your website are the first step to being noticed by Google (90% of all searches done, are via Google!)

Submitting high quality, original articles using your important keywords to the main article directories really helps your search engine optimisation. At the bottom of each article you have an opportunity to include some information about you and your website address.

How does this help? Whenever someone uses your article on their website, they include the live link to your site. Assuming they used your article because it matches the subject of their site, these incoming links can really increase your ranking.

Dianne suggests that every company with a new website should write 10 unique articles of 250 to 300 words and post them to the article directories over the course of a couple of months.

A good article website for international companies is ezinearticles.com. If you have the time, you should also submit to goarticles.co.za. On the other hand, I found Newsline.co.za is weak and offers poor formatting - your article will appear less than professional.

Reciprocal Link Building

Reciprocal links can be sensitive, but done correctly they can have a positive effect. Unfortunately links have been abused by companies who hire SEO "specialists" - the links are arbitrary and irrelevant. Google is much smarter than that!

You don’t want to trade links with just anyone. You must only link with people who are in your niche. If incoming and outgoing links are from sites on a related topic, the search engines see this as more authoritative. So if you are selling computers on your site, you would want to link with someone who sells computer software, not someone who sells cosmetics.

An even better way to exchange links is to trade articles. Write an original article for the other person’s site and include a link to your own site. This is more powerful than being part of a list of links because search engines look at the total number of links on a page when calculating their worth. So a single link from a blog post is more valuable than a link on a page of fifty other links.

Remember you are not only creating a website for search engines - you want readers also! Good, relevant links are better from a reader point of view too.

Internal Links

Creating links within your site is also important. When you write an article, create links back to other related articles you’ve previously written. This makes it easier for the search engine spiders to crawl your site. It also makes it easier for readers to locate related content which may make them spend more time on your site.

Clearly building incoming links and therefore improving your search engine ranking is not all that hard or mysterious. It just takes a little planning and some time.