Link Campaigns
Search engines place a great deal of importance on a website's 'link reputation'. A website's link reputation is dictated by the websites that link to it. These are called the inbound links. Because the best websites should have the best inbound links, link reputation offers search engines another valuable way to assess and rank websites.
However it is more than just a case of the number of links. The link reputation of the website offering an inbound link is factored in too. Thus an inbound link from a website with a high link reputation is worth more than one from a website with a lower link reputation.
It is important to increase links from good quality websites, which are closely related to the same topic. And the anchor text (the words used in the inbound link) should use target keywords. Care must be taken not to 'trick' or 'spam' search engines by creating poor links from unrelated websites or too many too quickly as this could result in the website being penalised.
The best inbound links will generate traffic in their own right and will also improve the website's ranking on the search engines.
Outbound links are important in their own way too. The better the quality of the outbound links the higher the website's reputation as a source of reliable information and the more likely visitors are to return.
In practice a formal link building campaign will include the following steps:
Gauge Potential for setting up good quality inbound links
To do this you can should carry out searches using the key phrases on which you'd like to be found and see which websites are already performing well. These sites themselves may well constitute good prospects to contact. In addition, it is possible to find out which sites in turn are linking to them. This can be done by carrying out a search adding 'link:' before the domain name: e.g. If you wanted to find out which sites link to Alpha State, you would search on ' link: www.alphastate.co.uk '
As you might imagine, some of the websites that you find linking the websites that are already performing well for the key phrases on which you'd like to be found, could in turn constitute good potential links for your own website.
It is also possible to see broadly how well Google regards individual websites and consequently their 'link reputation', by using a 'Page Rank' tool, available on the 'Google Tool bar', that can be installed on your browser.
The 'Google Tool bar' can be downloaded from here.
Once you have installed the tool bar. You need to click 'Options' from the 'Settings' drop down menu.
Then you need to tick the 'PageRank' box in the 'More' tab of the 'Toolbar Options' pop up window.
Having done the above and clicked 'OK', you should them see a small horizontal 'PageRank' bar in the 'Google bar' near the top of you browser, showing the page rank for each site. Importantly the PageRank is only shown when you are looking at the home page, so make sure your looking at the home page when checking.
Invite websites to link to your website
If you feel there is potential for setting up links to your website. You will then need to contact them. This could take the form of a standard e-mail in which you just edit odd phrases to personalise it for the individual recipients. If you find there is indeed some potential for setting up links to your website you should consider:
A) Setting up a dedicated links page on your website. This will allow you to offer reciprocal links in return, and so encourage a positive response. Please click here for an example.
B) Setting up a page providing useful information making it easy for them to link to you. Please click here for an example.
What Next?
If you need any help on the above or would like to discuss us setting up links pages, adding links for you or providing you with a system, whereby you can add them yourself - very easily, we'd be pleased to hear from you.
