Search engines, link building and directories
What is so important about link building?
Link popularity, based on your link building strategy, is the main factor major search engines use to rank websites making link building an integral part of any effective search engine optimisation strategy.
Link popularity means getting a number of quality websites linking back to your site. Links have varying degrees of quality: you get really poor quality links which can actually harm your website or you can get excellent links which will help your rankings tremendously. Search engines consider your site to be more important and rank it higher if more quality sites link to your site - where quality means links that are relevant, in context and have good authority (a link back from a trade association or government website has higher 'authority' than a friend's or trading partner's website).
External links can be tremendously powerful in competitive sectors.
Link building is also about structuring your internal links in the best way possible. Internal linking helps Google and other search engines properly understand and therefore index correctly your web pages.
Do I need directory listings?
Many people think of search engines and directories as the same thing. In reality there is a big difference between them. Yahoo is the most well known directory on the web. For someone searching the web, the differences are hardly noticeable but understanding the difference is critical to getting your site displayed highly in the search results.
- A directory is a list of web pages that are reviewed, selected, and categorised by humans.
- A search engine is a searchable database of information, where the information is obtained by using an automated 'spider' to "crawl the web" by following links from web page to web page and website to website.
Directories help establish one-way links for your site without large investments of time or money. In order to make directory submissions successful, you have to find and build a list of suitable, good quality, search engine friendly directories to submit to, from the many thousands out there.
Develop directory listings gradually
Search engines expect your link popularity to be developed naturally, over time - so be selective about how many directories to use: too many back links within a short time frame and search engines will almost certainly ignore these links and you will have wasted your time and money.
Reciprocal linking
If done properly "reciprocal linking" is a good way to enhance your traffic. Reciprocal links allow you to share your traffic with other quality websites. In return, you also receive "targeted" traffic from the websites of your linking partners. Again the more relevant and better quality these links, the more effective they will be on your page rankings.
For more information on how we can help you build a good, effective link building and directory submission strategy, call 01934 517003 or contact us.
