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Papers & Articles > Web Site Promotion > Link Building

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LINK BUILDING
Link building encompasses many different types of activity, and is a most important aspect of web site promotion.

As the Users survey found, links from other sites can be a significant source of new visitors, and Forrester's User Monitor (M7) indicates a 51% increase in UK users finding new web sites by following links (39% in 1999 to 59% in 2000).

External links can have a big influence on the way many search engines rank web sites for relevance. The more links from different domains pointing to a particular site, the more important search engines assume that site to be - and for some engines, particularly Google, the 'quality' of these links is also incorporated within the ranking algorithm. Thus, a link from an authoritative site such as Yahoo! for example, would rate much more highly than a link from a site which has no links itself. The importance of external linking has been confirmed by the experimental web sites discussed in Section 2 (not published here).

It is likely that search engines will increasingly rely on link 'popularity' as a ranking mechanism, since it is less open to deception by individual web site owners. Those engines that assess link popularity use the following criteria:

Number of links - the more the better.
Relevance - links from sites which are relevant or cover similar subject matter to the site in question.
Link text - text used in hyperlinks which has keywords relevant to the destination site can improve the ranking of that site.

Maximising the number of external links is thus a promotional imperative, but should be aimed at quality links with high relevance to the nature of a given site, preferably with keyword rich hyperlinked text (another reason to avoid the 'Click here' cliché).

There are four principle routes to developing links:

FFA (Free For All) schemes.
Exchange programmes.
Strategic alliances.
Personal and business contacts.

FFA sites simply list hundreds of links in exchange for email addresses which are used for building lists for sale, or for sending advertisements to directly. Organisations such as Linc-o-matic (www.linc-o-matic.com) provide bulk submission services to hundreds or thousands of FFAs. Though FFAs provide many links to a site, they are very poor quality, are mostly irrelevant, and are very ephemeral.

Links on FFA pages are re-cycled on a first in first out basis, so that old links may be replaced in days or even hours as new links are submitted - often before the site has been spidered by a search engine to get the benefit of a link popularity rating. Therefore, to make effective use of FFAs, a site must be submitted on an almost daily basis.

A major drawback of FFAs is the large volume of spam they generate, and one must be prepared to receive many hundreds of such junk email. The results from Section 1 (not published here) confirm that FFA schemes appear to have little influence on ranking, are rather time consuming, and incur a high nuisance factor.

Link exchange programmes provide a free trade of links amongst participating webmasters. Every member must agree to maintain a page of links to every other member of the link network, and comply with various rules on pain of removal from the other member sites. If selected carefully, a link exchange scheme can improve ranking over time, but it is important to find one with a relevant subject category in order to score well on relevance (i.e. all other members are in a similar or complementary field of business).

Examples of popular link schemes are Links To You (www.linkstoyou.com) and LinkMe (www.linkme.com). It is rumoured that some search engines such as AltaVista are positively discriminating against some sites which have a large page(s) containing little but large numbers of outward links. It seems these may flag an attempt to manipulate link popularity unfairly by these engines. Some sites with genuine lists of useful reference links appear to have lost rank because of this. Excessive numbers of outward links should be avoided - quality rather than quantity is the key.

Strategic alliances are becoming an increasingly important feature of online business, for both large and small companies. Such alliances have their own raison d'être, but may also be pursued with the object of trading links. This is especially helpful for complementary businesses, for example: estate agents - solicitors - removals companies.

Such linking schemes help to funnel relevant traffic from site to site, and also score better with the search engine ranking system.

Finally, personal and business contacts should be used wherever possible to acquire links. When reciprocal links have been arranged, it is most important to ensure that all relevant pages are submitted to the search engines. The number of links pointing to a site can be checked on some search engines, such as Raging Search, by typing in to the search box:

link:www.domainname.com,
or by using third party services such as www.linkpopularity.com and www.marketposition.com/linkpopularity.htm .

Other creative ways to increase external links include the emailing of newsworthy press releases to the news organisations, and offering web site content to other webmasters in exchange for a link.

Some sites offer special awards (e.g. 'best managed site of the week') and issue a 'medal' or 'plaque' in the form of a GIF file for the winner to display on their site. This GIF contains a link back to the awarding site, so improving its link popularity.