1) Try to have more links coming into your site then going out. The more relevant sites linking into you will help rank your site better. I understand that’s not always possible since most people won’t want to link into your site unless you link back to them, however, if your business has partners that really want to do business with you, or vendors that you do business with, perhaps you can make it part of the “contract” between you and them that they must link into your site without your company returning the favor.

2) Large number of RELEVANT incoming links is key to proper website ranking, not just a large number of links. Do not get every website out there to link into you. Only websites that are relevant to what you offer on your site should be linking into you. For example, if you are a homebuilder, then sites that cover “new homes” in different locations or sites that talk about “home remodeling” or sites that talk about moving to a geographic location are more relevant to your business then sites that sell Nintendo Wii. Relevance is key, not company size. So if Nintendo links to your new home site, yes, you will get lots of traffic, but it will not help your ranking with Google because it has nothing to do with homes and the traffic that you get, though large, may not be relevant traffic that will turn those visits into actual conversions.

3) Links from influential sites are better then links from none-influential sites. Suppose you have a choice between two companies to get a link from them to your site. Company #1 is a large fortune 500 company with many employees, lots of yearly sales and a large (in terms of # of pages) web site. It has information that is relevant to your site. Let’s also assume that it has 100 incoming links from other external sites to it. Company #2 is a small business, managed by 10 people, also has relevant information to your site but the site is not as huge (in terms of pages) as yours. However, let’s assume this site is very well known on the Web with many (thousands of) incoming links from external sites to it. It would be more beneficial to your site to get an incoming link from Company #2 then Company #1 because it has many more links going to it and therefore Google would consider that website more “influential” and therefore, it would consider your site more influential (links wise).

4) Link anchor text is extremely important. When other sites are linking into your site, make sure you tell them exactly what the anchor text should be. The anchor text is the text that is shown on the web browser that is linked to your site. I’m sure you have seen many “click here” links which takes you to a particular website. The problem with “click here” is that these are not keywords that make that link relevant to your site. Continuing with the new home builder example, instead of “click here”, you might want to have an anchor text that reads “New Homes in Southern California” and have that link to your site. By doing that, you are providing the keywords that are relevant to your site for them to use in their site when linking to you.

5) The content around the incoming link is important to relevance. This means that if the page that is linking to the “New Homes in Southern California” (see the example above) is talking about the life style in Southern California and all the great communities in Southern California, that link will rank higher then the same link in a “restaurant page” where they talk about all the great food in Southern California and the great entertainment offered there, but there is no mention of homes, or communities, or any other “relevant keywords” to your site.

6) When adding outgoing links, do not add more then 10 to 15 links at a time. Let some time pass before you add more links. Search engines will sometimes look suspiciously at your site if all of a sudden they see many outgoing links that were not there before they last indexed you. Pace the placement of your outgoing links.

7) DO NOT rush link building. Carefully plan out your strategy and make sure you link to and get links from relevant sites and reputable companies. Remember, you don’t want to be “black listed” by search engines, or worst, tarnish your good reputation because of who, or how, a company linked to your site.

8) “Content Is King”. I’m repeating myself here, but keep in mind the content, the context, the keywords and the location of where you are linking to and are being linked from. Search engines look at the links, the relevancy to your site, the relevancy to their site, the sites that point to their site that point to yours, the location of where that links is, plus a host of other attributes in their algorithm to help in ranking your site. Content Content Content.

9) Link into different pages within your site, not just your home page. When asking other sites to link to you, do not ask all of them to link to your home page. If you have 1000 incoming links all pointing to your home page, that ranks lower then if you had 100 incoming links, but all pointing to different pages within your site. Diversify.

10) Internal linking is just as important as external linking. Linking within your site to other areas of your site is just as important in helping a search engine spider (index) and rank your site as linking to other sites and/or having other sites link into you. For example, if in one of your product pages you say “for more information, remember to contact us.”, make sure you link “contact us” to your contact us page. Try to find different (but relevant) ways to link internally between your own pages.

Cheers!
- Marcelo
The Digital Media Dude