Web Site Link Architecture

Popularity only counts if indexed!

Most sites linking to you are not indexed in all engines…
In many cases there is significant number of web sites that link to your site. In most cases these pages have never been submitted to a search engine, thus the links they contain are not counted towards your site popularity.

For instance, given 5 search engines, if each reports that there are 100 sites linking to you, how many sites really link to you? It could be 100 and every site is in each engine, but it is more likely to be over 300 sites, where only a fraction are known to any engine and there is little overlap. In fact, if there is NO overlap, you could have 500 sites that link to you. The problem is that all of the sites are not indexed in all of the engines.

Your "popularity" is being understated because of these "undiscovered links". More importantly, these sites are themselves not in the search engines, so they are not receiving traffic, hence they are not sending you traffic.

As the Internet has become more popular, web sites have turned to new technology like dynamic HTML and Flash or well designed graphics to improve the user experience. Good navigation through your web site isn't just important to your web site. Search engines use the links within your web site to crawl and index the pages those links point to.

• Ideally, a search engine should start at your home page and be able to crawl through your entire web site. Search engines can crawl several types of links - standard text links, graphics with and image maps contained within graphics.
• These links give clear directions for the search engines to follow. They act as a roadmap of your web site for search engine crawlers. Site Map pages are also valuable resources for search engines because in one central area the engine can see links to everything. The more of your web site the search engine sees, the more times you will appear in a search result for a certain topic.
• It's very important that you have text links on your web site that contain keywords that you are hoping to compete for. Search engines not only follow links, they also analyze the text within them to help determine a sites relevancy. Graphic links often don't have any text associated with them so the engines don't treat them the same as text links made up of good keywords.

Search engines have problems crawling links contained in dynamic HTML, JavaScript and Flash based pages. These technologies use languages and commands that a search engine spider easily travels through. When a search engine sees one of these dynamic elements, it will usually stop crawling any deeper into your web site.

For search engine marketing to succeed, good link architecture is essential. Not only does it create a consistent user experience that will make your end users happy, it ensures you are taking the right steps to be seen by search engines. Being seen is the best way to grow your online business. If people can't find you, no matter how compelling your message, offer or service, your online business won't find the audience that's already looking for you. With the domination of Google and Yahoo on the search engine marketing, words like 'link popularity', 'link prominence' and 'link reputation' have become buzzwords in the search engine marketing industry.

1000 links to your web site within minutes? NO! Concentrate on the top 5 search engines and others will pick up content eventually.

Before there was Google, links to other web sites were the online equivalent of personal recommendations. People linked to a web site because it was a good web site with good content. Nowadays, people often trade links just to get links. Links are placed to totally unrelated web sites and often, links to other web sites are not useful for the visitor of a site.

Good links, bad links and Google PageRank …

What does this mean to you? Does it mean that it still makes sense to trade links? Yes, it does. However, when you get links to your site, you should do it right.

When you build links to your web site, you should act as if search engines didn't exist at all. Just use common sense. Don't focus on the Google PageRank or the search engine ranking of a web site.

If you see a good web site with good content you should trade links with that site if that web site is useful for your visitors. One day, that page might have a higher PageRank and it will still link back to you.

Ask yourself: Is the web site related to your site? Would it make sense for web surfers if they linked to you and you linked to them? Would visitors of the other web site be interested in my site?

Search Engines are only one way to attract visitors to your web site. Visitors who find you through related links on other sites are very targeted visitors. These visitors are much better than visitors who found you through an unrelated keyword on a search engine.

Do the right thing and get the right links!

Just use common sense. Search engines try to put human common sense into mathematical formulas with their search engine algorithms. If you have good link partners, you'll get targeted visitors from your link partners as well as higher search engine rankings because of high link popularity and high quality links.

LINK SUGGESTIONS:

• Contact vendors, suppliers and resellers and ask them to link to you
• Contact your Industrial Associations and ask them to link to you
• Contact Organizations that you are a member to link to you
• Contact Publications that you advertise with and make sure you have a link.
• Do not depend on them to automatically add your link!
• Contact other businesses you are not in competition with and link to one another
• Contact Chamber of Commerce and City Sites and get links
• Submit your web site to search engine directories

AVOID:

• Link farms
• Non-quality linking

Click here to discuss more about how to build a 'Link Building Campaign' for your web site, or call:

(281) 829.0223 or information@allstarsb2b.com
Houston, Texas