Pittsburgh Internet Consulting's Link…

                                Pittsburgh Internet Consulting's Link Building PDF File
                          A comprehensive, simple, and FREE link building document


Introduction:

Link building should be one part of any online marketing campaign. Users can get to your website for the 1st time in one of
three ways; they can type it into the address bar after learning about if offline, they can find it in a search engine or they can
click on a link from another website. Links are also important because your rankings in all the major search engines are
influenced significantly by the number and QUALITY of the links to your site. So two of the three ways users can find your
website are directly related to your ability to obtain links pointing TO your website. The purpose of this document is to
summarize the basics of link building and link popularity so that any webmaster or site owner can understand and apply this
important element to their website.

Link Popularity Definitions:

Link Popularity = the measure of the number and quality of links from other websites pointing to your site's home page or
internal pages on your site. Links from your site to other sites do not help your link popularity.

Link Quality = A link is considered high quality if it sends lots of affordable, targeted visitors to your website.

However the definition that is used more often for link quality is the one that applies to your search engine rankings.
According to the search engines, link quality is based on the following factors:
       1) The link popularity of the site that links to you
       2) The text that is included in the hyperlink and the text that surrounds the link
       3) Whether or not the website or page that you are listed on is related to your business or keywords
       4) How many links are on the page that links to you and where in that list your link appears (top is better)

Bad Links = Certain types of links are never beneficial and are a total waste of your efforts. Link farms and link rings will
generally send very little traffic and will provide you with virtually zero benefit to your search engine rankings.

Link Farm = A site that exists only to allow a webmaster to place a link to their site and will accept just about everyone who
takes the time to fill out a form. These are also called Free For All (FFA) link pages.

Link Ring = This is a site that allows you to join their ring by placing a snippet of code on your site. If you place the code for
the ring on your site, your site's links will be included in this rotation of links on all the sites in the ring. While this used to be
a popular way for niche sites to reach each others customers there are very few web rings that are still of high quality today.

PageRankTM = This is Google'sTM proprietary name for their measure of link popularity. Here is the explanation from the
Google.com site: http://www.google.com/technology/.

Deep Link = A link that goes from the linking site into an internal page on your site several layers down, i.e. not your home
page.

Link Neighborhood = This is a grouping of the sites which relate to your site through links. It includes the sites that link to
you and the sites you link out to. It also takes into account the link neighborhood of each of these sites. A good link
neighborhood is one that relates to the theme of your site and also one that does not contain any shady websites.

Reciprocal Links or Link Trades = This is when two sites agree to link to each other and both place links on their websites to
one another.

One way links = This is a link that points to your website but you do not link to in return.

Direct Links = This is a link that points from another website directly to your site (Ex: http://www.domain.com)
Indirect Links = This is a link that points to your website from another through a through a 3rd party tracking site. These
generally do not count towards search engine link popularity. (Ex: http://www.trackingsitehere.com?linkid=yoursite)

3-Way Links = A 3-way link is when a company essentially tries to hide a reciprocal link by using a 3rd party site to facilitate
the trade. Site A requests a link from Site B but instead of offering them a link from Site A, they instead offer a link back from
Site C. By using this technique both Site A and Site B gain a direct or one-way link. While this technique was very ingenious
a few years back, a representative from Google said "These links stand out like a sore thumb". So I would not recommend this
as a major strategy.

                                                         Site A



                                        Site C                             Site B


Themed Links = This is a link that relates to the "theme" or category of your business.

Natural Links = Any link that occurs without a submission on the part of the webmaster. Natural links occur when another
webmaster links to your website to benefit their sites users or to reward your site for unique content or a useful application.
These are also referred to as "organic links"

IP Block = A group of IP Addresses which are assigned to a network administrator and grouped by Classes. Class A, B and C
describe the number of IP addresses available in the assigned group, with Class C being the smallest and most common. Many
web hosting companies request a Class C block for their servers and place each website on a unique IP address within their
allocated IP block. One old (spam) technique was to create a large number of websites, which are typically hosted on the same
server, or webhosting company, and link them all together. This no longer works because major search engines now look at the
IP address of the sites linking to each other and will discount their link popularity if they find those sites having the same IP
address, or falling within the same Class C IP block.

The Past, Present and Future of the Impact of Links on Search Engine Rankings:

The Past:
A long time ago, in an internet far, far away, search engines cared nothing about links. They looked only at your pages to
determine your rankings. Then GoogleTM realized that quality sites happened to have a lot of links from other quality sites. By
counting these links as "votes" they could figure out which sites were thought to be high quality by other webmasters. It was a
great theory and helped GoogleTM to become the most relevant search engine online. Then they told us they were counting
links. As soon as webmasters became aware that links helped their rankings, the value of using links to determine rankings
started going down. At the time links on link farms, link rings, and reciprocal links all helped your rankings and webmasters
abused all three.

The Present:
Links are still important to your search engine rankings. But GoogleTM is making some significant strides towards not
allowing low quality links to improve your search rankings. Reciprocal linking as your exclusive link building strategy is
dead. At this stage you should only trade links with sites that either benefit your users or that are both closely related to your
business and a high quality site. GoogleTM also claims to be looking at ways to de-value paid links on sites that exist only for
the purpose of selling links to other websites. However, in my opinion, these one-way links should still help your rankings on
most purchased links except for the most egregious link brokerage sites. MSN®, Yahoo® and Ask Jeeves® also continue to
evaluate links to determine your rankings. At this stage reciprocal and other bad linking techniques still help your rankings on
other search engines than on GoogleTM.
The Future:
As I look in my crystal ball things get more and more fuzzy, but I think we can assume a couple of things. First, webmasters
will continue to try to fool the engines into thinking that links are higher quality than they are. Second, the search engines will
try more and more methods to stop webmasters from gaming the link popularity system. This will lead to one of two ends;
either the search engines will stop using link analysis as part of their ranking algorithms or alternatively the search engines will
improve their link analysis enough so that only the best quality links help your rankings.

Therefore the future of link popularity and link building is simple. Do not waste your time chasing low quality links. Instead
develop sound linking strategies where the links themselves are beneficial even if the search engines do not count them. Then
you can look at any search engine ranking benefits from your link campaign as a bonus and you will receive the traffic and
branding benefits from the links for the long term.

The best ways to build HIGH QUALITY links to your website

Your "warm" Market:
Any linking strategy should start by insuring your site is listed in all the easy places. I refer to this as your warm market.
When a sales rep starts at an organization, the 1st thing he is asked to do is to go through his contact list and see if anyone he
knows would be interested in their services. Links are the same way. Start by making sure that your website is properly listed
on all the sites that you currently do business with. This includes: vendors & suppliers, customers, friends, business
associations, trade groups, the chamber of commerce, etc. These links are usually easy to obtain and will stay online for a long
period of time.

Major Directories And Verticals:
Next there are a few key places to be listed on the web that are considered major web directories. Any serious website should
insure that they are listed in the following directories.

http://dir.yahoo.com - $299/year annual recurring fee
http://www.dmoz.org ­ Free listing, but may take six months to a year or longer to be listed in this volunteer directory
http://www.business.com - $199/year per category
http://www.joeant.com - $39.99 one time fee
http://www.goguides.org - $39.99 one time fee

In addition to these five major directories, this area of link building also includes being listed in all of your industry specific
verticals. For example, if your business relates to the calibration of equipment, then the portal http://www.ecalibration.com
would be a definite place to acquire a link to your website. In addition to a themed link to help your search engine rankings,
the traffic from this site would be very targeted to your industry. Most industries have their own verticals that service their
market, they can be found easily by searching the web.

Develop Unique Content or Applications On Your Site:
When your site contains something that is useful for other sites, webmasters will link to it to benefit their users if they become
aware of it. By creating interesting content or a useful application, your site begins to accumulate "natural" links. This is
when a webmaster finds something on your site they believe is valuable and then places a link to your page from their site just
because they want to utilize your site's information for their users.

A great example of this is the SEO website http://www.bruceclay.com. Bruce is a leading expert in the field and is recognized
as such from his peers. He has created many unique pages that other SEO company's link to in order to support the content on
their own sites. Two examples are http://www.bruceclay.com/web_ethics.htm and
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm. In the 1st example, Bruce explains the difference between
reputable SEO companies and disreputable companies. This has encouraged links from other SEO companies that follow his
example of ethical SEO practices. So his site gets links from other reputable companies in his industry and not from the
companies that violate these rules of thumb. Next the searchenginerelationshipchart.htm is something that Bruce updates
regularly and has become a very useful tool in our industry. So again, many people link to it to give him the credit and to pass
this unique and simple tool onto their users.

This is just one example. Some other ways to get links using this method would be an industry specific glossary, product
reviews, a unique forum or message board, or an application to test a user's bandwidth. This technique is only useful if the
resource you create is truly unique and of high value. If you are recreating something that is already on the web, or generating
boring copy that doesn't add to a user's web experience, then this will not be effective. If you do generate something unique,
then you need to announce your new web content using e-mail, blogs, and message boards to get the word out.

Checking Your Competitors Links:
Another way to find links is to check your competitor's links. Then by reviewing the sites that are linking to them, you can
find other industry "experts" that may link to you. Start by using the searches below to find a list of sites where your
competitors are listed.

Google:           link:www.domain.com
MSN:              link:www.domain.com
Yahoo:            linkdomain:domain.com ­ site:domain.com

Go through each web page one at a time and decide which ones might be willing to link to you. If the site is a directory or
review site, they will most likely list your site. If the site is in your competitor's warm market, they will probably not list your
site. While this method can be labor intensive, it can also generate some good themed links with high link popularity. Submit
your site to the relevant free directories and consider advertising on some of the affordable portals that seem to be high quality
sites. The final page in this packet is an example of a simple spreadsheet you can use to track your link submissions so that
you can follow up until you receive a link on the sites you desire.

Searching The Web To Find Free Links:
By using GoogleTM or other search engines, you can find sites that may be willing to link to you. When searching
for links your search should contain two parts; a "link phrase" and your keywords. The "link phrase" is a phrase
that a site would have on their page if they let other sites add links. Some of these phrases are listed here:

"add your site"                                                       "submit your site"
"add your site"                                                       "submit your website"
"add your site"                                                       "list your site"
"add URL"                                                             "submit URL"
"add a URL"                                                           "submit a URL"

So if you wanted to search for travel websites willing to accept link requests you could search for: "add url" and travel

After performing your search browse through the results just like you would if you were checking your competitor's links.
Again, you are looking for sites that have a free submission form, an e-mail link for free submissions, or a reasonable fee for
the link. The same spreadsheet shown at the end of this packet can be used to track your submissions.

Reciprocal Linking (Link Trades):
Trading's dead, trading's dead. Let us all rejoice that trading is dead. As I stated earlier in the document GoogleTM has already
began to discount reciprocal linking. So sites that both link to each other will not receive much if any benefit from the link
trade according to the search engines. It is assumed that MSN, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves will also move in this direction.

There are some situations where link trading can still make some sense for your company. I would only trade links in two
cases. First, if you and another company target the same market or keywords and do not compete at all, it makes sense to trade
highly visible links with this company to share your traffic with each other. Secondly, link trading can still have some benefit
if you keep your reciprocal links extremely focused. In the following example, one of our clients has created a furniture
directory. By keeping their trades exclusively focused on furniture only, this reciprocal directory should not harm their
rankings and can help them to establish a solid link neighborhood. (Ex: http://www.myofficefurniture.net/htm/furniture-
links.htm)

Distribute Press Releases Online:
This is a great way to get a few long-term and high quality links. The larger your organization and the more true news you
have, the better this strategy is for your company. By using a site such as PRWeb.com to submit online press releases, your
releases (with hyperlinks) are distributed on the web. A release on this service cost $119/release at this time. The more
newsworthy the releases, the more links you will receive each time you send a press release.

For eCommerce and small business websites this has limited application. We suggest that large eCommerce players release
one or two press releases per month through this system to support their overall linking strategies. For small businesses we
would only recommend using this system when a release is truly newsworthy. For content sites or large corporate sites, we
suggest submitting press releases as often as your company issues a traditional press release.

When writing a press release for the web there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, write the title of the press release
with a specific keyword phrase in mind. The entire release should be focused (optimized) for that keyword phrase or the main
point you are trying to convey. This gives the possibility that your press release will achieve good search engine rankings for
this phrase and send your site traffic from the release sites. Next, be sure to link to your home page in the conclusion or more
info section of the release. Finally, within the content of the press release include 1 to 3 deep links to pages inside your
website that relate to your release.

Write Articles and Get Published Online:
One of the often overlooked ways to generate links to your site is to write articles that relate to your business and get them
distributed on the web. Inside these articles you can place one or two links back to your website. Usually one link can be
placed in the main copy of the article and one in the signature or conclusion of the article. Once you write an article, you will
need to submit this article to industry portals that may consider publishing it to fill out their content. These are going to be the
best article submissions, when you locate a site that matches the content of the article and contact them directly. Another way
to submit articles is through an article submission site or software. One quality method is articlemarketer.com where you can
issue an article at a cost of about $120/year for unlimited submissions. Another quality site is ezinearticles.com. Ultimately
the success of your article campaign will depend on the quality of your articles. The better the quality of your articles the more
distribution they will receive, the more traffic they will generate and the longer they will remain online.

Hire A Link Campaign Expert:
Sometimes the best way to achieve any task is to pay an expert to accomplish it for you. The same can be done with link
building. Reputable consultants have been doing link building for years and with the proper budget, you can find one that can
promote your site effectively. One example of this is Eric Ward from http://www.ericward.com. It is important to remember
the following when hiring a link consultant: the consultant should be concerned about the quality of the links not the quantity,
the campaign should be measurable, and finally any benefit these links have on your search engine rankings should be "added
value" not the primary benefit of the links you are gaining through this campaign.

Blogs and Message Board Postings:
Search engines still index links in blogs and message board postings and they can drive very good traffic. However, be very
careful with using this as a defined strategy. This should be considered a supporting method and not a primary method to
increase your link popularity. When posting to a blog or message board first you should be sure to follow the terms and
conditions of the board. If they allow you to use a link to your site in the signature, by all means take advantage of that link.
But then do not post every five minutes just to get an additional back link. Instead become a responsible user of the message
board or blog site and your links will have more value. Plus if you become a user that others respect, they may follow your
links to learn more about you. As far as posting links in the middle of your posts, again the rule should be to be responsible. If
the link you are adding truly has value to the other users of the page, then add it and others will thank you for it. If you are
writing posts just to fit in your advertising, either your posts will be removed or you are posting on a very low quality site.

Link Building Resources

http://www.google.com/technology/                                     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_popularity
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum12/                                http://forums.seochat.com/link-popularity-43/
http://www.ericward.com/


                                                           ###
Pittsburgh Internet Consulting was founded in 2001 and specializes in search engine optimization, search engine marketing,
email marketing, website planning, project management and RFP Writing.


                                            http://www.pittsburghinternetconsulting.com
                                            info@piconsulting.com
                                            Ph:     (412) 942-0222
                                            Fax: (412) 942-0224
                                                                    Business Name Here - Link Submission Worksheet
                                                                                                                                                            Last
Domain                           Full URL of Link Page                Method Used                               Search Details                      Status Submit Listed                           Notes
domaina.com                  http://www.domaina.com/page123.html    Competitor Review   competitora.com                                             Pending   11/01/05            Submited via online form
domainb.com                  http://www.domainb.com/page123.html    Competitor Review   competitora.com                                             Dead      11/01/05            Site is offline
domainc.com                  http://www.domainc.com/page123.html    Competitor Review   competitora.com                                             Linked    11/01/05   11/28/05 Verified on 11/28 by Bob Smith
sitea.com                    http://www.sitea.com/page123.html      Competitor Review   Anothercompetitor                                           Pending   11/01/05            Submitted via email@site.com
siteb.com                    http://www.siteb.com/page123.html      Competitor Review   Anothercompetitor                                           Dead      11/01/05            Received e-mail, will not be listed
sitec.com                    http://www.sitec.com/page123.html      Competitor Review   Anothercompetitor                                           Pending   11/01/05            Responsed to inquiry on 11/28
websitea.com                 http://www.websitea.com/page123.html   Web Search          Google: "add url" and travel                                Pending   11/01/05            Submitted via address@site.com
websiteb.com                 http://www.websiteb.com/page123.html   Web Search          Google: "add url" and travel                                Pending   11/01/05            Submited via online form
websitec.com                 http://www.websitec.com/page123.html   Web Search          Google: "add url" and travel                                Pending   11/01/05            Submited via online form
websited.com                 http://www.domaina.com/page123.html    Web Search          Yahoo: "add url" and travel                                 Linked    11/01/05   11/28/05 Verified on 11/28 by Bob Smith
domaind.com                  http://www.domaina.com/page123.html    Web Search          Yahoo: "add url" and travel                                 Linked    11/01/05   11/28/05 Verified on 11/28 by Bob Smith
domaine.com                  http://www.domaina.com/page123.html    Web Search          Yahoo: "add url" and travel                                 Dead      11/01/05            Site is offline
sited.com                    http://www.domaina.com/page123.html    Directory List      http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/   Pending   11/01/05            Submited via online form
sitee.com                    http://www.domaina.com/page123.html    Directory List      http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/   Pending   11/01/05            Submited via online form
website2.com                 http://www.domaina.com/page123.html    Directory List      http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/   Linked    11/01/05            Verified on 11/28 by Bob Smith
sitef.com                    http://www.domaina.com/page123.html    Directory List      http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/   Pending   11/01/05            Submited via online form



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