Increasing your search engine rankings by trading links
In the never ending quest to reach the top of all search engines, it helps to understand the factors that really matter when it comes to determining who is on top and who isn't. Of course, as I have touched on this subject before in a previous blog posting on Understanding Search Engines. In that article, I mentioned two different factors when it comes to determining who rises to the top of the pile, these being On-Site optimisation and Off-Site optimisation.
On-Site optimisation is the way the content on your site is laid out, and relates to factors like keywords, image tags, page titles and menu structures. I cover all of this for a site when I create them, but it is worth keeping in mind if you are making changes to the content on a site.
Off-Site optimisation is what I would like to cover in this posting. It is called Off-Site because the website owner can't directly change anything that isn't on their own site (hence off-site). This esoteric term simply means how other sites on the internet relate to your site. In basic terms it is how many other sites on the internet 'point' to your site by having a link to it, or mention the site by name in the text on their website somewhere.
I must add at this point that nobody except the employees at Google know exactly how their search engine works, so what I am about to write could be considered 'hearsay' - but there is enough circumstantial evidence around to consider it close enough to the truth (your honour!).
Google works on a concept called PageRank - each site is assigned a PageRank by Google. The PageRank will drastically affect how high in the search results a website will appear. To calculate the PageRank, Google appears to use the number of external links pointing to a site, balanced with the number of links pointout 'out' of a site and comes up with a number. There are probably more factors to it, but it is fairly certain that this is one of the most important.
If you can imagine that search engine rankings are the result of a democratic voting process, each site on the internet can cast a vote for another site by creating a link to it somewhere on the pages. Google regularly scans most of the internet, and counts up all of these links (yes, all of them). The search engines are thus one big popularity contest. This works quite well, because if you find an article on a particular website interesting, you'll probably create a link to it so that other people can follow and read it. Or if you regard a particular website as a true source of information, you'll post a link as such.
So links are votes. Collect more links and you've got more votes, and you'll get a higher PageRank. Get a higher PageRank and you'll rise up the rankings. Simple?
Well, no. There is more to it than that. It's not a real democracy, because each vote doesn't have equal weight. The site with the link to yours also has a PageRank, and the 'votes' from sites with higher PageRanks count more than the votes from sites with lower PageRanks. Thus one good link can be worth 20 'poor' links.
Then there is the number of outgoing links on your site. If the number of outgoing links far outweighs the number of incoming links, you'll sink down the rankings because you are probably a 'link farm' - a name given to websites whose only reason for being is to contain links to other websites. We've all come across these, and they are very frustrating. However, Google is always tinkering away and they have gotten rid of a lot of these in recent years - which most people will notice if they stop and think about it.
How do they know? The smart money is on the fact that they are working out how much actual content - that is, pictures and words, is on a site, and assigning higher ranks to those sites which actually have something to read on them. So the good news is that if you have a genuine site stuffed full of information about products and services in your field of industry, you're not going to be considered a link farm and will do better than them. If you tend to go on a bit like I do, then all the better, as long as the content is all roughly relevant (no sniggering in the back!). However it also means that you should always keep an eye on how many outgoing links you have on your site - you don't really need to link to other sites unless you think it is necessary.
There's something else, as well. The text of the link (for instance, the link I have higher up on this page is 'understanding search engines', not the address of where the page is) determines how high the site will rank for those terms. I'll repeat that another way - by putting a link to another site underneath a piece of text, you are saying 'this site is very important for this piece of text'. This will push a ranking higher. I read about a neat trick somewhere on a site once - put into Google the search term 'Click Here'. Now, I don't know what you think you would find, but I can tell you what you will find. You'll find the home page for the Adobe Acrobat Reader. 2nd on the list will be MapQuest - and about 5 Billion other references (that isn't exaggeration, there is actually 5 Billion internet pages reference for the keywords 'Click Here'). Now if you actually look at the home page for Adobe Acrobat Reader, you'll find instructions on how to download the very popular software for reading documents. You'll find everything BUT the words 'Click here'. If you look at the MapQuest page, you'll find the same thing - the words 'click here' don't appear anywhere. Yet these two sites are top of a 5 billion deep page pile.
How can this be? Well, it is because of about 1 million websites in the world, all who distribute documents that need the Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to read them (pdf documents), just like my website. And most of those websites put a little link on the page saying 'Click here to download Adobe Acrobat'. And that's it - because the words 'Click Here' are written on 1,000,000 links back to the Adobe Acrobat site, Google considers that the Adobe Home page is really about the most important site on the internet when it comes to 'Click here'. Same goes for MapQuest, but there isn't as many sites (only a couple of hundred thousand). But those 100's of thousands of sites with 'Click here for directions', linking to MapQuest means it is also considered important for 'Click Here'.
So the 'Click Here' is a bit of a trivial exercise because nobody really searches on those terms, but it should have website owners thinking - it matters not only to get links to their site, but also what the link says when it points to the site.
To go up the rankings, you need (1) as many incoming links as you can get and (2) to make sure those links contain the keywords you want to be found for if possible.
Trading Links with other Sites
So how to get links? There are many methods, but link trading is one of them. Be warned though - swapping reciprocal links is not the be-all and end-all of rising through the search engine rankings, but every little bit helps. Link Trading sounds complicated, but it really comes down to asking people who may work in the same industry or related industries to place a link to your site on their site, and in return, you'll place a link to their site on yours.
Ideally, concentrate on the keywords you'd like your site to be found with, and ask the other person to link the site using those keywords. They should be able to change their site - but if they have an antiquated, difficult to update site - you can always send them my way!
In return, you can put a link to their site. Most of the sites that I create have a links section on it somewhere specifically for this purpose. And it is dead easy to add a link - even easier than sending an email, I promise!
I suggest an email which goes something like this :
Hi {persons name}
I'm looking to get some more links to my site to improve people's awareness of it, and to hopefully improve on my search engine ranking. If you can, could you place a link on your website pointing back to mine? I can do the same for your site on my links page. {provide the URL here}
If you can, could you please make the link as follows :
Text : {your keywords}
Address : {your site address}
Please email me to let me know how you'd like your link to look.
thanks
{your name}
But I won't go into the process of creating links here, as I have written a document in the Knowledge Base on it, called 'How To Create and Maintain External Links'. As the Knowledge Base is restricted to iFinity subscribers, you'll need to sign into the iFinity site first to view it.
Summary
I really can't stress the importance of getting links to a website strongly enough. More than anything else, it will greatly help with search engine rankings. Take the time to think about the people you know that have a website. It might be suppliers, customers, complementary businesses, family and friends. You've only got to outdo your competitor by one or two links and you'll probably jump them on the search engine rankings - most sites have less than 20 external links pointing to them, especially as the industry gets more specialised.
By being able to create reciprocal links, you have the power to market your website by offering something in return to other people. If they offer to link without a return, so much the better, but in my experience, not many people will.
Next time I will post about getting those elusive one-way links by listing with free site directories. These are popping up all over the place on the internet, particularly ones devoted to a particular region or industry.