Improve the Link
Popularity of your site
By Sumantra Roy
Link popularity, i.e. the
number of sites which are linking to your site, is an increasingly important
factor as far as search engine placement is concerned. Other things remaining
the same, more the number of links to your site, higher will be its ranking.
What is important is not only the
number of links to your site, but also the types of sites which are linking to
you. A link from a site which is related to yours is more valuable than a link
from an unrelated site.
In this article, I explore
different methods by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. I
start with the methods that you shouldn't bother using, then go on to the
moderately effective methods, and then end with the most effective methods you
can use to boost the link popularity of your site.
1) Submitting your site to Free
For All (FFA) pages
A common misconception among many
Internet marketers is that while FFA pages may not directly bring in traffic
to your site, it will help to improve the link popularity of your site, and
hence, will indirectly bring in traffic through the search engines.
Nothing could be further from the
truth. Most FFA pages can contain only a certain number of links at a time.
This means that when you submit your site to a FFA page, your site will be
placed at the top of the page. However, as more and more people submit their
sites to the FFA page, your site will be pushed down, and finally, when it
reaches the bottom of the page, it will be removed.
Now, since you can bet that plenty
of other people are also submitting their sites to the FFA pages, your site
will remain in these pages for only a short span of time. Hence, in order to
ensure that the search engines see your site if and when they come to spider
the FFA page, you will need to ensure that you submit your site to these FFA
pages on a regular basis - at least once a week.
Even if you used an automatic
submission program to do it, can you imagine a worse way to spend your time
and/or money? Furthermore, many search engines recognize these pages which
only contains links to other sites as FFA pages and may completely ignore
them. And while I haven't yet seen any evidence that submitting to the FFA
pages will actually penalize your site, there is every possibility that this
might happen in the future.
Hence, when it comes to FFA pages,
my advice is simple: don't even think about them.
2) Joining Reciprocal Link
Services
Some people have recommended that
in order to increase the link popularity of your site, you can join some
reciprocal link services. The basic idea behind these services is that you add
some pages to your site which contain links to other sites which are members
of that service, and in exchange, these members will also add pages to their
sites which will contain a link to your site. Theoretically, more the members
of that service, more your link popularity.
However, I have plenty of
reservations about using this method to boost the link popularity of your
site:
i) Most of these services require
that you add a visible graphical or text link from your home page to the pages
containing the links. If they require a graphical link, it can completely
destroy the general look and feel of your site. Even if they require a text
link, how would you feel if a visitor to your site clicked on such a link and
found one of your competitors (who is also a member of this service) right at
the top of a page?
ii) Most of these services give
the same pages containing the links to each of its members, i.e. the pages
that you are required to upload to your site are exactly the same as the pages
which all the other members of that service are required to upload to their
servers. Even the file names of the pages tend to be the same for all the
members. Most search engines are now able to detect such duplicate pages in
different domains and may either ignore the pages or may even penalize all
these domains for spamming.
iii) Instead of linking only
related sites with each other, most of these services link all the members
with each other. This means that lots of unrelated sites will be linking to
your site. As I mentioned before, links from unrelated sites are simply not as
valuable as links from related sites.
Hence, I don't recommend that you
join any reciprocal link programs.
3) Exchanging links with other
webmasters
Another way of improving the link
popularity of your site is to exchange links with other webmasters who have
sites which are related to yours, but are not direct competitors. Here's how
you can do it:
First, open a database program
like Microsoft Access and create a new table containing fields like FirstName,
LastName, Email Address, URL etc. Then, make a list of the sites belonging to
your competitors. Then, go to AltaVista,
and type in the following in the search box:
link:somesite.com -url:somesite.com
where somesite.com is the domain
name of one of your competitors. This will give you a list of all the sites
which are linking to that competitor. Then, find out in what context a
particular site has linked to your competitor. If this site is an affiliate of
your competitor, then your chance of getting a link from this site is limited,
unless you offer an even better affiliate program. However, if you find that
this site has a Links page which contains links to other sites, one of which
is a link to your competitor, then it is an excellent prospect for exchanging
links. Find out the name and email address of the webmaster of the site and
add them to your database. In this way, go through all the sites which are
linking to your competitors, locate those sites which you think may want to
exchange links with you, and build up your database.
Once you have done that, create a
Links page in your site, and add the URLs of these sites to the Links page.
Then, send an email to these webmasters, introduce yourself and your site,
congratulate them on building an excellent web site, tell them that you have
already added a link to their sites from yours, and then ask them whether they
would be kind enough to add a link to your site. In your email, emphasize the
fact that exchanging links in this way will be mutually beneficial for both of
you because it will help both of you drive traffic to your sites. Wait for a
month or so to see the response. Some webmasters will agree to link to you.
Others will simply not respond. After a month, remove the links to those sites
who are not interested in exchanging links and using the methods outlined
above, try to locate more sites with which to exchange links.
When you send the email to the
webmasters, make sure that you personalize each email. Don't begin every email
with "Hello Webmaster", begin with "Hello Mike". If you
want, you can use email merge programs to automatically personalize each
email. You can check out some email merge programs by going to http://download.cnet.com
and searching for "email merge" (without the quotes).
Another thing that you can do is
to mention in your Links page that you are willing to exchange links with
other web sites. This allows other webmasters who come to your web site to
propose a link exchange.
4) Starting an Awards Program
A moderately effective method of
improving the link popularity of your site is to start an awards program. You
can have web sites which are related to yours apply for an award from your
site. The sites which win the award get the chance to display the logo for
your award. This logo is linked to your site, preferably to a page which
contains more information on the award.
If you publish a newsletter,
consider declaring the winners in your newsletter. You can also perform a
review of the winners' sites in your newsletter. This adds useful content to
your newsletter and also gives more webmasters the incentive to apply for your
award, since you may review their sites in your newsletter. This also gives
them the incentive to subscribe to your newsletter to see if they win the
award.
Make sure that you give awards to
only those sites which deserve to win. If you give your award to sites which
don't deserve it, your award will have little credibility, which will, in
turn, hurt the credibility of your company. Furthermore, make sure that the
logo you design for the award looks professional. If it doesn't, not many
webmasters will want to display it in their sites.
5) Giving testimonials
This may sound a bit unusual, but
giving testimonials for products or services which you find useful can be
another moderately effective way of improving the link popularity of your
site. If you really like a product, simply write to the company and tell them
why you liked the product so much and how it has helped you. Chances are, the
company will write back to you to thank you for your comments and will ask you
for permission to display your comments in their web site. Tell the company
that you have no problems if they publish your comments, but request them to
add a link to your site along with the testimonial. There is every possibility
that the company will agree since publishing the URL of your web site gives
more credibility to the testimonial.
Of course, please don't go about
giving testimonials to every company you can locate just because it will
improve your link popularity :-)
6) Posting to Message Boards and
Discussion Lists
Another moderately effective
method of increasing the link popularity of your site is to post to online
message boards. At the end of every message that you post, you can sign off by
mentioning your name and the URL of your web site. If the message board allows
it, you can even include a short promotional blurb about your site at the end
of your posts. However, make sure that the individual messages that are posted
to that message board are archived in static HTML pages (i.e. the URLs for the
individual messages should not contain a "?"). Otherwise, the search
engines will consider these pages to be dynamic pages and may not spider these
pages and hence, will not be able to find your link.
Email based discussion lists which
are archived on the web in static HTML pages can also be used to boost the
link popularity of your site in a similar manner. In this case, the signature
file that you use with your email program should contain the URL for your web
site.
7) Starting a Link Contest
A good method of improving the
link popularity of your site is to give away prizes to other webmasters if
they link to you. The prizes that you give out should ideally be something
which other webmasters will find valuable enough to want to link to you, but
which do not cost you too much. For instance, if you publish a newsletter, and
have unsold ad inventory, you can give away some free advertisements in your
newsletter to the winners. If you sell a software (or an ebook), you can give
away a free copy of your software or ebook to the winners, since it doesn't
cost you anything to produce an additional copy of digital goods like software
and ebooks.
Link contests work best if you run
the contest on a continuous basis and if you declare new winners frequently.
If you run the contest for a few months, and then stop it, the webmasters who
had linked to you will all remove their links. However, if you run it on a
continuous basis, and declare new winners every month or so, the webmasters
will have the incentive to keep their links to your site.
Also, make sure that you require
all participants to have a link to your site either in their home page, or in
an internal page of their site which is linked to their home page. Also ensure
that the page which contains the link is no more than two levels deep from
their home page (i.e. it should not take more than two clicks to go from the
home page to the page containing the link). If they don't do this, the search
engine spiders may not index the page which contains the link to your site,
and hence, may not find your link.
8) Writing articles and allowing
them to be re-published
This is by far one of the best
ways of improving the link popularity of your site, and one of my favorites.
Whenever I write an article on search engine placement, I first publish it in
my newsletter and then I publish the article in my site as a separate web
page. I also submit it to the following article submission sites:
http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
Many webmasters and ezine
publishers frequent these article directories in search of articles.
Submitting my articles to these directories gives them the opportunity of
re-publishing my articles. While I have had some success with each of the
above directories, by far the best among them is the ezinearticles.com
directory.
Now, at the end of each
article, I mention that people are free to re-publish the article as long as
they include my resource box (i.e. my bio) at the end of the article. I always
include the URL of my site in the resource box. This means that whenever
someone publishes one of my articles in his/her web site, I have another site
linking to my site. Also, many ezine publishers archive their ezines in their
web sites. If they have re-published my article in a particular issue, I again
get a link.
Writing articles is also an
excellent viral marketing tool. As some webmasters and ezine publishers
publish my articles, other webmasters and ezine publishers will read my
article. Some of them, in turn, will publish my article, which will again be
read by other webmasters and ezine publishers, some of whom will publish it...
and so on.
Also, since only web sites related
to mine would be interested in publishing my articles, all these links tend to
come from related sites, which, as I mentioned earlier, are more valuable than
links from unrelated sites.
Writing articles, of course, has
another very important benefit - if you write good articles, it makes you
known as an expert in your field. This helps to improve your credibility,
which makes people more comfortable about buying your products or services.
Some notes about writing articles:
i) I have learnt through
experience that some webmasters will publish other people's articles and will
display the complete resource box but will not link to the URL mentioned in
the resource box. In order to prevent this, you need to explicitly state that
the article can be published only if the URL mentioned in the resource box is
linked to your site.
ii) Your resource box should not
be too long - it should be no more than 6 lines long, formatted at 65
characters per line. Otherwise, other webmasters and ezine publishers will
hesitate to publish your article.
9) Starting your own affiliate
program
This is another excellent way by
which you can improve the link popularity of your site. When you have your own
affiliate program, you give other webmasters the incentive to link to you. In
this case too, since most of these web sites will be related to the industry
in which you are operating, these links will be more valuable than links from
unrelated sites.
Now, when you start your affiliate
program, you need to decide whether you want to run the program yourself, or
whether you want to outsource it from a third party. While outsourcing your
affiliate program has a number of benefits, doing so will not help you improve
the link popularity of your site, because affiliates are going to link to the
third party's site. In order to improve the link popularity of your site, you
need to ensure that the affiliate links are pointing to your domain.
The affiliate program software
that I highly recommend and have used for the affiliate program of our search
engine positioning services is Kowabunga Technologies' My
Affiliate Program. Although this
software is hosted in a domain owned by Kowabunga Technologies, they give you
the option of having the affiliate links pointing to your own domain.
10) Submitting to the directories
This is by far the most important
step as far as improving the link popularity of your site is concerned. As I
mentioned before, what is important is not only the number of links to your
site, but also the quality of the links to your site. No links are as
important as links from some of the major directories like Yahoo!, the Open
Directory etc. However, Yahoo! currently requires a payment of $299 per year
in order to list any commercial site. Paying them $299 per year just to
improve your link popularity is probably not cost effective. But, the Open
Directory is free, and you should definitely get your site listed in the Open
Directory.
Also, you should submit your site
to as many of the smaller directories as possible. You can get a list of such
directories here.
