by Matt McGee
One World Telecommunications
posted: May 23, 2006
(continued from SEO
in 2006, Part 3: New Rules of Online Marketing)
There are a lot of new rules and new ways to bring
people to your web site, and they involve marketing
your web site in a similar way that you'd market
a new offline business. But one of the old rules
still applies to your web site:
Links
The SEO landscape has changed more dramatically
in the area of links than anywhere else. Incoming
links to your site can be a great source of traffic,
and they're still very important in terms of search
engine visibility.
Links are not measured the same today as they
were just a couple years ago.
1. Today, the quality of the sites linking
to you is much more important than the quantity
of sites linking to you. Google's PageRank algorithm
is being replaced by TrustRank, a term Google
has filed to trademark. Links from trusted sites
are the most beneficial, especially .gov and .edu
sites.
2. Reciprocal links -- or link trades -- are useless
today, at least in terms of impacting your search
engine rankings. If you want to trade links with
another site because it will benefit both site's
visitors, go for it. Just make sure the other
site is on-topic for your site, and don't expect
much benefit in Google's SERPs from these arrangements.
3. Outbound links from your site to other sites
in your industry that are trusted as authorities
are a good idea. Think of linking as a neighborhood
-- the sites that link to you and the sites you
link to make up a neighborhood. You want your
web site to be hanging out in a high-class neighborhood.
You should link to other trusted/authority sites
that will interest your visitors.
Getting Other Sites to Link to Your
Site
In theory, as you add great content to your web
site ... as you develop an active and interesting
blog ... as you take part in the online conversations
about your company or products, you should begin
to get more links to your site. People will link
to your site without asking, and without even
letting you know. This is good.
There's another, more active way, too: Take some
of this great content you're creating and offer
it for placement on some other site.
Say what??!!
It's like this: If you sell digital cameras online,
you should be writing articles about how to choose
the right camera, how to shoot good photos in
low light, how to correctly use F-stop and aperture
settings, etc. Some of this goes on your own site,
but you could offer some of your articles to various
camera review sites, or photography club sites,
etc. You send them your article and include a
paragraph at the end describing who you are and
what your company is. And be sure to include a
link to your web site! This can be a great way
of getting both traffic and relevant, high-quality
links to your site.
And then there's that old, tired way of getting
links: Emailing another webmaster and just asking
for one. If you're a web site owner, surely you've
received emails asking you for a link. Do you
usually delete them? Do you ever read any of them?
I bet you delete the ones that are written in cookie-cutter
style and look as if they've been sent to you
and a hundred other webmasters. But you're more
likely to read the request that's actually written
to you individually and sounds as if the sender
knows something about your web site.
That personal touch is what you want if you decide
to send out emails asking for links from other
sites. Address the webmaster by name if you can.
Talk about his web site enough to show that you've
done your homework, and mention that you think
his visitors might be interested in your site,
too. And don't tell him exactly how you want your
link to be written -- that webmaster knows how
to appeal to his visitors, so let him write the
link however he thinks is best.
In the end, the important thing to remember is
this: Search engines are fighting hard to stop
spam, and taking steps to eliminate any manipulation
of their SERPs by unnatural means (like launching
a new site and having 2,000 inbound links one
week later). So your efforts to get better search
engine visibility have to be more natural. The
old tricks won't work anymore. It's a new ball
game and he who knows the new rules best, wins.
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