Link Building and Pagerank

Links from other pages help increase your site's Pagerank™. There are several ways to get inbound links. What follows is a checklist of the most important ways you can get links to your page:

Internal linking

Since Pagerank™ is assigned to individual pages rather than sites, internal linking passes Pagerank™ from one page of your site to another. Linking your pages to one another also benefits your visitors, who will have easier access to the information on your site. It will also benefit you, since your visitors will stay around longer.

Linking within a network of sites

If you own several websites, you can link them to each other, and use this technique to increase the Pagerank™ of specific pages.  If you have many sites linking extensively to each other, you must be careful and host your sites with different companies so that they don't share the same C Block IP address (which could alert search engines of artificial linking, possibly leading to your pages being penalized or downgraded).

Link exchanges

This is a good way to increase Pagerank™, provided that you exchange links with reputable sites with a topic somehow related to yours. If at all possible, your partner's link page must be accessible from their homepage, have a decent Pagerank™ and not contain too many outbound links.

Writing articles

This is a great way to get links and increase Pagerank™. Basically, you write articles related to your field, and allow others to publish them for free in websites and newsletters. At the end of your article, you include a resource box (a small bio) with a link to your website. As webmasters publish your articles, your links will spread like wildfire and your Pagerank™ will increase.

Listing your sites with reputable directories

Since good directories use qualified human editors who choose listed sites very carefully, they are given significant weight in search engine algorithms. The two biggest directories are Yahoo! ($299/year listing fee) and DMOZ (free, but listing your site can take months). In between, there are many smaller, high quality directories that charge reasonable listing fees. They should be an important part of your link building program.

Renting links

Many high Pagerank™ websites rent text links to other pages. These links are really a form of adversising, although their main objective is not necessarily to generate traffic but to pass along Pagerank™. Links from pages with Pagerank™ of 7 and higher can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month.  Links from pages with Pagerank™ of 5 and 6 are also very well regarded and less expensive.  Again, we must make sure that these pages are reputable, and that they haven't achieved their Pagerank™ using deceptive or unethical techniques, or you run the risk of having your pages penalized.

Posting in forums and weblogs

Since forums and weblogs offer plenty of fresh content, search engine spiders tend to crawl them often. If you are a prolific contributor to these types of site and use a signature file with a link to your page, the more entries you post the more links to your page the search engines will find and add to their index.

Getting unsolicited links

The unsolicited link is the most valuable link, and the most difficult to get. It occurs when you have content that is so remarkable that people feel compelled to link to you. You will most likely get unsolicited links when you post original ideas, voice strong opinions, serve a specific niche very well, or offer something of value for free (for example a useful online tool).  An example of a site that has achieved high Pagerank™ mostly on unsolicited links is Jakob Nielsen's useit.com. The 'guru' of web usability has an extremely plain and unattractive site from the graphic standpoint, however, his great content and original ideas have compelled so many people to link to it that it is one of the world's most visited sites.

You can freely reprint this article provided that you leave the copy (including active links) intact, and include the following resource box:

Mario Sanchez is a Miami based freelance writer who focuses on Internet marketing and web design topics.  He publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of web design and Internet marketing articles, tips and resources.  You can freely reprint his articles in your website, ezine, or ebook.

For more tips on how effective linking can benefit your search engine optimization efforts, read The SEOBook, by Aaron Wall

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