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How to Influence the Search Engines
Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between
a small, barely profitable or visible website and a
traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both
good and bad, to influence the search engines. Some
search engines react to certain strategies better than
others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they
react to. To document all of these things would require
a significant number of pages and research that goes
beyond the scope of this article.
However,
there are a number of things that can be documented
that will work for most if not all search engines. And
let's face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference
between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy.
They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These
three search engines in any given month are responsible
for over 90% of all internet searches.
So,
what is this article about? It's about what you can
do as a website owner that will influence the search
engines using commonly accepted practices of linking
to other websites (outbound) and getting website links
(inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies
that a website owner usually will employ to increase
their website value in the eyes of the search engine.
They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site
linking and directory linking. A website owner should
not think that using just a single strategy is the right
answer - sure it will help your SEO but it won't be
the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4
techniques and to do it naturally.
Each
of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions
that can be summed up as:
1. Reciprocal Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site
B links back to Site A
2. One-Way Linking = Site B links to Site A
3. Multi-Site Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site
B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site
D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites
involved.
4. Directory Linking = Site Directory A links to Site
A
That
seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to
perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren't
willing to spend the time or don't have the time to
spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one
of the highest priority tasks that you need to address,
just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer
Service. Without free traffic from the search engines,
other traffic generation strategies that usually require
payment must be engaged.
Now
doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even
harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn't
trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon
your website. No one except the search engine engineers
know all of the exact penalties but we have some good
theories for some of them.
The
first is the rate at which links are created. There
is a certain threshold for creating links that is too
fast. It's possible that the threshold is a sliding
scale and is related to the age of the website according
to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic website
should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas
an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be
OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your
linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind,
especially if you are thinking about buying links.
The
second is that having a link to every site that links
to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In
other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking,
you will likely move up the SERP's (Search Engine Results
Page's) but you won't reach your sites full potential.
Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more
natural to the engines.
The
third is having all inbound links to your site on "linking"
pages will make those links less valuable than having
a natural link on a contextually relative page for a
percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can
drive this context percentage, the better your website
will rank. These types of links are often some of the
most difficult links to generate an exchange for because
it requires more time and effort for both website owners.
The
fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking
sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6
and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message
that you purchased your links and that is not natural
to the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links
for driving traffic is just fine and it is. However,
you should not expect the search engines to give those
inbound links very much weight when calculating your
SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for
you to have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links
and a decreasing number of inbound links as you move
up the page rank scale (0 - 10).
The
fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied.
It isn't natural to have every website that links to
you to have the same text on the link description. The
natural tendency would be to have a certain percent
be the sites name, but after that it should be a wide
variety of description. Your link text description is
a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make
sure that you keep that in mind as you specify your
preferred link text description on your website.
Finally,
it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound
links to appear within the text of a page that appears
natural for the reader of that site. And for those links
to not all point back to the home page of your website.
It's most natural for a good high quality link to appear
in the text of a page and have it point internally within
your site.
So,
when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep
all of these things in mind and don't be impatient.
Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website
could end up in the "sandbox". It is rumored
and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly uses
a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they
have aged to a point that Google no longer feels that
they are being manipulated. Many of the search engines
use similar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites
and manipulation sites to keep their SERP's from being
cluttered.
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