Linking

The process of just linking to a site is easy; the process of research to make sure what you're linking to is proper and helpful is another thing. You could link every single one of your search terms to something like Wikipedia, which seems to have almost every topic covered, but the search engines are smarter than that. Not that Wikipedia isn't good to link to every once in awhile, because they're a highly ranked page, but going to only one outside source entirely doesn't help your relevance any, plus Wikipedia only explains what words mean; they don't do any of what you're probably trying to tell others about as it pertains to your site. Instead, there are two other ways where it benefits you greater.

One way is to find pages that link to things that have some sort of web relevance with what you do, what your keywords are, and also have some sort of relevance. For instance, when I was optimizing a site for a "healthcare consultant", I discovered a site that's dedicated to healthcare consultants, and it had a nice ranking, so I linked him to that site. Because one of his keywords was healthcare consultant, it's a perfect fit; he benefits, and they benefit. If he belonged to that group and they linked to him already, that would have been an even bigger benefit.

For another client whose page wasn't doing anything for him, I did research on his name and found that he was prominent on the internet on other sites, because he belonged to many organizations, and had articles written about him and his many patents. So, I had a plethora of links I could choose to link back to his page, based on terms he had in his keywords and accomplishments he'd listed on his "about" page. Some of these sites were already linking to him, so it provided a great boost to his site.

The second way is to link to some of your own internal pages. For instance, if you notice the table of contents on every page, each one has a link to one of the other tutorial pages. Because those terms are keywords for me, and because they're topics that the pages lead to, it ends up giving prominence to both pages. Now, this will work slower initially than finding pages that already have significant rankings, but it will benefit you later. As a matter of fact, it benefited one client because he used a term in his business that I just couldn't find online, but it was important to what he did. So I asked him if he could write a couple of paragraphs about it and let me create a page explaining it. That now gives him greater web prominence because there are probably other people out there who have wanted to know what that term means; now they have a chance to find it, which will only enhance his rankings.

Of course, the danger with linking is you can do two things that will negatively affect your website. One is having too many links that have nothing to do with your business or keywords. Some pages have tried having multiple links to nothing, and some of them just don't work. Others can do fairly well, such as marketplace sites, but the highest ranked ones seem to be the ones that have been around the longest, or those that can find some kind of niche market. One of our sites is a marketplace site with a ranking in the top 500,000, and it achieved that ranking in only 5 months.

The second thing is that pages that have no relevance, whether with anything you do, or because their own sites have no rankings and aren't optimized properly, can bring you down if you use too many of them. So, if you and your three friends all set up websites today, and decide to link to each other, and none of you have done any other optimization, none of your sites will do anything positive online.

One final thing about linking. It wouldn't hurt you to set up some type of links page on your site. One, it gives you the opportunity to show organizations you belong to, and if they link back to you even better. Two, it gives you the opportunity, if you decide to do it, to contact others and exchange links, which can be beneficial to both of you. Three, it allows you to list informational links that help your clients find other things for themselves that they might have had problems finding on their own, thereby making you a valuable resource for more than one reason.

However, this page hasn't continued up the scale because of linking. No, it keeps going up because of the next thing on our tutorial list, which is content.

If you want to jump around, here's the table of contents:

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