Responsible Linking

Link me!

All website owners want their website to rank well in search engines, and to be easily located in online directories.

And it's no secret that part of good ranking is the number of inbound links to your website. So the chase is on... the hunt is up... for lots and lots of links.

The No-No of link farms

There's a terrible temptation to become a little seedling in a link farm - a site which exists only to spawn tremendous numbers of links for sites looking for an easy link solution. Such link farms have become notorious - and websites using them will find themselves identified and blackballed by many search engines.

That makes link farms not only useless - but self-defeating.

"I love your site - wanna link?" spam

Webmasters may find themselves receiving clearly spamming requests for link exchanges - often from sites that are completely unrelated in subject matter to one's own site! The inclusion of the obviously generic "I loved your site" is merely irritating, not flattering.

Such spam emails may actually generate from webmasters or website owners of good sites - but the method is unsound since it engenders a negative response in most webmasters to receive spam.

But isn't all unsolicited email spam? Not at all... and requests for reciprocal links is a terrific way of gaining good linking. BUT... it all comes down to quality, approach, and appropriateness.

Giving the right impression

There's no sense in asking for links before a website is completely ready. It must be fully coded, with no broken internal links, with all the design working correctly. It must be uploaded. It must be able to be viewed by the person from whom one is requesting a link.

The better and more elegantly coded your website, the more likely it is that good website designers will be happy to include a link to you on their site. If your site works properly and looks terrific, it will have a much better chance of gaining inbound links.

Email requests for links are often more successful if a link exchange is offered. The webmaster whom you contact will know that it is a reciprocal arrangement, of benefit to both of you.

It definitely helps if you express genuine admiration for the website from whom you are requesting a link. Know the site - have visited it at the very least! - and see that its design is good, that its content is good (perhaps even complementary to your own site's content), and that a link exchange can only be of mutual benefit.

Quality links... better than quantity

The more relevant your website is to another with whom you exchange links, the better. Such links are termed quality links, and are considered more important by search engines than links from sites that are completely irrelevant to yours in subject or category.

Search engine algorithms will give a link a higher importance if it comes from a website that is highly ranked. The catch is that everyone wants a link from high-ranking sites, and it is unlikely that such a website will wish to link to you. They can gain little or nothing from a link exchange with your fledgling site, after all...

It is good strategy, then, to request links from sites that are ranked even moderately, sites that are still building their popularity, or sites that would have a genuine interest in linking to your website.

Links with sites that aren't, strictly speaking, relevant to yours are not to be entirely despised, it must be said. The more links your site has, the more opportunities for web browsers to find you. The more you are found, the more people will want to find you. If your site is well-designed and informative, the more likely it is that other sites will link to you, and users will find you through keyword search in search engines.

All of that will help, gradually, to increase your ranking.

Effective Linking Strategy

The best linking strategy is to build relationships with other businesses, organisations or personal sites online. It's a matter of demonstrating that your website is beautiful, informative, relevant, and useful. Responsible linking isn't one-two-three instant results... but it is the most effective way in the long run to gain a consistently powerful and relevant online presence.

Looking for and maintaining those links is not an automatic job. It requires constant work. You can choose to pursue and maintain this aspect yourself, or you can choose to have Web Empress take care of this for you for a monthly fee. It cannot be ignored by online businesses. Formulate your link strategy so that your well-designed site has the visibility it deserves.

From concept to design, Web Empress works to provide you with a website to suit your design criteria.