How to Increase Search Engine Rankings through Links to Your Site

This 3,600-word article explains why Google's PageRank system makes good sense in determining relevancy of your website. I explain the factors involved in Google's linkage pattern analysis and how to make the most of your knowledge. Finally, I offer eight linking strategies that you can (and should) implement to move your site up in the search engine rankings. In case you were wondering, the hard work of obtaining reciprocal links is only a small part of an overall strategy to get quality incoming links. There are easier ways, you know.

This article contains older information. Go here for newer information on SEO (search engine optimization).

As mentioned in a related article, there are two main factors that determine any given webpage's ranking for a keyword:

1. The keywords on your webpage, down to the HTML code level, and
2. The pattern of links to your domain name -- quantity, quality, and context

What I want to discuss in this article is how linkage patterns affect a site's ranking for any particular keyword, and then offer seven different linking strategies that can help you increase incoming links to your website -- and increase your search engine rankings.

If you're a small Internet marketer, you may long for the good old days of the "level playing field." You may be offended that your site's importance should be determined by the number of links to you. "My site and my online business are excellent," you protest, "better than anything out there. Just ask anyone who has visited the site. What gives Google the right to determine the 'relevance' of my site based on links? Why should the rich get richer? It isn't fair!" you cry.

How Linkage Patterns Develop with Local Storefronts

To help explain Google's logic, think of a local storefront business on Main Street, USA. Let's say you set up shop in 2001 with a music store, Music Planet. Within driving distance (perhaps 75 miles) of your store there are three other music stores.

Now someone from outside the area moves to town. He's looking for some guitar strings. He asks his neighbors if there are any music stores in town. His neighbor replies, "My kids always go to Green St. Music for their school music supplies."

The newcomers ask the clerk at the grocery store. "Green St. Music," he says.

Now he calls the Chamber of Commerce. "Green St. Music is the oldest store in town," the receptionist tells him, "though we have three music stores among our members."

He asks at the Library. "Green St. Music."

Now he looks in the Yellow Pages:

• Green St. Music (largest display ad)
• Ferndale Music (smaller display ad)
• Music Planet (1 inch column ad)

Which do you think a newcomer will go to first? Green St. Music. Why? Because there are so many linkages to Green St. Music in that town that he concludes it must be the best thing going.

How do you get Music Planet recognized in town? How do you get linkages in people's minds to your store? The hard way -- networking. You advertise in the Yellow Pages, the local newspaper, and the Chamber of Commerce directory. You advertise on the radio. You invite well-known musicians to hold clinics at your store. You offer Friday night jam sessions each week with free coffee and homemade cookies. You host a mixer. You sponsor a children's sports team. You talk to the music teachers of each of the schools and give out coupons for a free music stand. Gradually you'll be recommended (get linkages) by the grocery clerk, the library, the Chamber of Commerce, and neighbors.

If you want to become established, you need to work your tail off getting acquainted, making yourself known, establishing a reputation. Recommendations (linkages) are the evidence of one's local reputation. Is this easy? No. It's plain old hard work and it doesn't happen overnight -- not even on the Internet.

Google's Linking Logic

In the early days, search engines relied on analyzing keywords and phrases on each individual webpage for ranking. But webpage analysis by itself is notoriously subject to manipulation and fraud.

Google, developed at Stanford by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, introduced the idea of linking as a way of determine relevance. Essentially, they developed a linkage map of the Internet that formed the basis of Google. Since then it has evolved. Some of the factors in this gargantuan linkage map include:

• Industry Hubs. For each discipline, Google determines which are the dominant authorities and information hubs -- usually the sites with the most links to them. Then Google looks at the sites the information hubs are linking to. Sites that merit of a link from an industry leader are considered more important than sites without such recognition. Thus, Google reasons, sites with links from industry leaders should rank higher than sites without such links.
• Number of Incoming Links. Google can count the raw number of incoming links to a website. It can also subtract from that total any cross-linking from websites within that domain or hosted with the same IP address. (But, according to Leslie Rohde, doesn't currently discount internal links.) All other things being equal, the more incoming links you have, the higher you rank. Even if these links are from small websites, getting a lot of incoming links will help you.
• Link Context. Google also determines the context of each link -- by the industry of the site, the relative importance of the website itself, the keywords on the webpage containing the link, and any keywords contained in the hyperlink itself. That's why links from an uncategorized link farm stand out like a sore thumb and are discounted by Google (though Leslie Rohde contends that Google doesn't yet do such fine contextual indexing).

Google determines what it calls PageRank (www.google.com/technology/) by a complex formula. The original formula, at least, is known, but no doubt it has changed some. Basically, a webpage's PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a "share" of the PageRank of every page that links to it), where a "share" = the linking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page. (For all the gory details see "Google's PageRank Explained and how to make the most of it," by Phil Craven, WebWorkshop, http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html)

Now Google takes PageRank and other linking information and provides weighting to each linking factor according to its own secret algorithm. This information, plus the indexing information obtained from scanning the particular webpage, are combined to determine that webpage's ranking for any relevant keyword.

Let's say that a webpage about "bronze wound guitar strings" from two different guitar websites has been indexed and both are clearly focused on "bronze wound guitar strings" -- to the exact same degree. Hypothetically, of course. The webpage with the higher Google PageRank (based on the pattern of linkage) would rank higher than the webpage with the lower PageRank. Let's say that both the indexing and PageRank are exactly the same. Then the relevance of the links determined by the hyperlinked text and appropriate synonyms on pages that link to it would come into play. This is very complex stuff, so people usually talk about PageRank which isn't so convoluted.

How big a factor are linking patterns compared to webpage indexing in determining the final ranking? No one outside of Google knows for sure, but I am guessing that at least 50% of the overall ranking algorithm is influenced by PageRank and other linking factors -- perhaps much more. (Leslie Rohde pegs this at about 80%, Bruce Clay at 30%). This probably won't show up with rare keywords, but with competitive keywords, PageRank and other linking factors tip the scale.

How to Find a Site's PageRank

How do you find sites to link to you that Google considers important? You can determine a site's relative importance in two ways:

Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com) installs in a web browser and shows Google's PageRank (on a 1 to 10 scale) for each page it indexes. A link from a site with a PageRank of 1 is going to be much more valuable than a link from a small, new site with a PageRank of 10.

Alexa Toolbar (www.alexa.com) also installs in a web browser. It shows Alexa's "average traffic rank," based on sites visited by Alexa Toolbar users. The most popular site is ranked #1. WilsonWeb.com is ranked about #5,400, while a small site might be ranked at #1,150,000 or below.

Again, a link from the higher ranked sites help you more than a link from a low-ranked site.

How to Analyze the Linking Pattern to Your Site and Competitors' Sites

How can you find out how many sites are linking to your site and competitors sites? The quick and dirty way is to ask Google. Here's the syntax:

But the amount of time to analyze the data obtained this way can be daunting. The software tool that does by far the best job of analyzing links is OptiLink Link Reputation Analyzer, a Windows program developed by Leslie Rohde. OptiLink queries Google and other search engines to find links to your site (or competitors' sites) and tells you a great deal of information about the linking patterns.

• What keywords are on the target page you select
• What keywords are contained in links to your target page
• What keywords are contained in the titles of pages that link to your target page
• What domains and IP addresses link to your target page
• How many incoming links to and outgoing links from every webpage that links to your target page.

Sort on "incoming links" and you find the "authorities" for your industry or field. Sort on the "outgoing links" and you find the "hubs" for your industry or field. OptiLink makes it easy to contact appropriate sites with a right-click which gives you "whois" data.

OptiLink will help you clarify and refine your own linking strategy by:

• Checking interlinking between your own sites.
• Adding and modifying keywords on your own webpages to make the best use of existing incoming links.
• Finding undesirable links and seeking to have them removed or changed.
• Identifying hubs and authorities in your subject area so you can ask for appropriate links.
• Narrowing the focus of each of your webpages to get more effective linking.
• Analyzing the links and strategies that your competitors are using.

For example, by analyzing links to my site I dramatically changed my linking strategy. Here's an analysis of the words found in links to my homepage:

It would be handier if OptiLink looked at whole phrases rather than individual words, but for technical reasons that can't be done.

Nevertheless, looking at this pattern, most sites are obviously linking to my company name or my personal name. But I don't care if I score high for "Wilson." Fewer sites are linking to important keywords or keyphrases such as "Internet marketing," "web marketing," or "e-commerce." After seeing OptiLink's analysis, now I make a point of specifying the wording in links to my site in giveaway articles, etc, using the keywords that will help me with my most important search terms.

If you're struggling to rank higher than your competitors, use OptiLink to analyze which important sites with high PageRanks (that is, lots of incoming links) link to your competitors and not to you. Then seek links from those sites.

Eight Linking Strategies You Can Implement

Here are seven strategies you can implement that will increase your link popularity and get you some of the high quality links you seek .

1. Get Directory Listings

Make sure you're listed in important directories. Some of these charge a fee; some are free.

• Yahoo! Directory (www.yahoo.com) is important. Yahoo! Express Submit costs $299 annually. Since this directory uses human editors, and Yahoo! has many incoming links, a listing here is important -- if you can afford it. http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/busexpress.html
• Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com) is the largest human edited directory on the Internet. DMOZ is short of volunteer section editors, so you may have to be patient and submit again. But this is free and a link here is important to your site. Not only does DMOZ have a page rank of 9/10, this directory feeds information to All the Web, AltaVista, Google, HotBot, Lycos, Teoma, Yahoo, and many others.
• Froogle.com is Google's product search tool. Currently you can link your product pages free and update them with a data upload every month or so. This will help them be shown in appropriate spots in Google searches as well as Froogle searches.
• About.com provides annotated links to some good resources. PageRank of 8/10 on homepage.
• Business.com provides annotated links to business sites. PageRank of 8/10 on homepage.
• Trade Association Directories. You may be entitled to a free directory listing. But if you need to pay, it might be worth it, since your trade association is likely to be a hub or authority in Google's linking map.

Of course, if a directory doesn't have a high Google PageRank, it probably isn't vital to be listed there. Beware of "upgrading" your free listing to a larger or more prominent listing. This might conceivably help you increase traffic from that directory, but it won't help your PageRank at all. Free is good.

But avoid link farms. Some website design firms and search engine optimization companies will cross-link all their websites. Be careful of this. Google looks for meaningful relationships between sites. When all it sees is a group of random links to any kind of site, red lights go off and a loud horn blasts "link farm, link farm." Google discounts links from link farms altogether. You can't help it if someone lists you in a link farm, but if you link to a link farm from your site it could hurt you.

2. Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking involves finding complementary sites, linking to them, and asking for a link in return. While sites willing to cooperate in reciprocal linking may have only a modest amount of traffic, cross linking between similar complementary sites provides contextual links that can help you rank higher in the fields important to you. Here are some tips:

Create out-of-the-way link pages to link to other sites, but make sure you have links from your main site to them. The links ought to have some pattern or grouping. Group the ammunition links together and group the target shooting links separately. If you can't recommend a site to your own visitors, don't put a link to it on your site. You're looking for quality sites to link to and to link back to you. No "trash."

You can identify appropriate sites by using a tool such as Arelis Reciprocal Links Solution or Zeus Link Reciprocal Link Generator that crawl the Internet looking for sites that contain the keywords you specify. They also provide a system to easily monitor links to and from linking partners. But do not use their tool that automates the e-mail contact process. Obviously automated messages are likely to be deleted rather than acted upon. Rather, make your contacts by e-mail or phone in a very personal manner for best results.

In your contact, make sure to state the value proposition clearly -- that is, how linking to each other will benefit both of your sites by slightly boosting each of your PageRanks in Google, and ranking each of you higher in the search engines. You might also state the similarities between your sites and what keywords are likely to be affected by the cross linking. Appealing to a webmaster's self-interest can get good results.

Specify the exact text you want in the hyperlink to you. For example, instead of a link to Acme Ammunition (which might help you rank higher for ammunition only), ask for a link to Silver Bullet Manufacturers, Acme Ammunition (which helps you rank higher for both "silver bullet" and "ammunition"). Google takes note of both the context of the linking webpage, but also any keywords contained in the link to your site. This information helps Google determine which webpages are most "relevant" when someone begins a keyword search.

Give the webmaster a reason why he or she should link to your site. "We offer a dozen articles on the fine points of ammunition manufacture and on 'rolling your own.'" If there's a special feature on your site that would be of interest in the field, by all means mention it. Any webmaster has two questions: (1) how does my site benefit from this link and (2) how might my visitors benefit from this link. If you can help the webmaster answer both questions positively, you're much more likely to get him or her to take the trouble to link to you.

Finally, be persistent. If you don't get a response, try again. Find the siteowner's contact information in the Whois directory, pick up the phone, and call. Reciprocal linking is slow, hard work. But the payoff is big as the number of incoming links increases and your PageRank moves up.

3. Give Away an Article

One of the best ways to get links to your website is to give away an article that other sites can use for content in their newsletters and on their website. All you ask is that they retain your name, the copyright information, and a link to your site. Remember to use keywords in the hyperlink back to your site.

To do this well you need some writing skills and a good idea of the kind of content that people in your field are looking for. Besides e-mailing copies of your article to a short list of closely related sites, you can list your free articles in several free content databases used by webmasters and e-zine editors looking for content.

Don't worry if the article is used in a newsletter rather than on a webpage. Most e-mail newsletters are archived on websites anyway (or ought to be).

About four years ago I wrote an article entitled "The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing" and gave my newsletter subscribers permission to place the article on their websites, so long as they kept the hyperlinks in place. Dozens took me up on it. About six months later, I received a phone call from a man who said: "I'd like to speak to the King of Viral Marketing."

"I wrote an article on viral marketing about six months ago," I replied, "but I'm by no means the king."

"Well, every place I look on the search engines for 'viral marketing,' your name keeps popping up," he said. "You must be the King."

I laughed but was flattered. Sure enough, to this day, a search on Google for "viral marketing" puts my webpage on top -- just by using the simple viral marketing strategy of giving away an article. (In the syndication section of my site you can see my other articles that you can put on your website. www.wilsonweb.com/syndicate/ )

4. Send out a Press Release

Press releases sent out through the standard press release circuits work much like free articles you give away. They are reprinted and hosted on a variety of sites, and become the basis of various articles written by journalists hard pressed to find ideas. The advantage of links in press releases over links in free articles is that the sites that display press releases tend to have higher PageRank than sites that might reprint free articles. They tend to be news or analysis sites with lots of links to them. I've used XpressPress.com to send out press releases for me and can recommend them. XpressPress.com and Eric Ward's NetPost maintain careful lists of editors in all sorts of different fields, and carefully screen what they send out, so their firms' releases are actually read when they are received. They can also help with writing releases. The PR industry standbys are Business Wire and PR Newswire. You can also submit press releases free through PRWeb.com.

5. Offer an Award Logo

Larger sites are immune to this strategy, but if you were to offer the "Silver Bullet Site of the Week" Award to various ammunition and target shooting sites, you'd find that many of them would put the logo (with a hyperlink to your site) on their website, sometimes on the front page. Insist that they link the logo to your site as a condition of displaying it. It's best to supply the HTML that they can paste on their webpage. Make sure you include ALT="Silver Bullet Site of the Week from Acme Ammunition" in the IMG tag of the logo. This isn't as good as a text link, but keywords in the ALT section of the IMG tag will help a lot since you select the sites and context for the link. What's the motivation here? Pride, recognition by somebody that my site is here.

6. Set Up an Affiliate Program

One way to get people to link to your site is to pay them to do so. This is commonly done with an affiliate program through which a merchant pays an affiliate a percentage of the sale -- but only when a sale takes place.

Affiliate programs are important in their own right as a way to generate traffic. But from a purely linking strategy point of view, an affiliate link only helps link popularity if it points to your own domain. If you use a hosted affiliate program service such as BeFree, LinkShare, Commission Junction, or MyAffiliateProgram, for example, the affiliate link points to their domain, not yours.

However, many shopping carts these days come with rudimentary affiliate programs that provide enough power for a modest business affiliate program. Examples are: ShopSite Pro, StoreFront 6, Miva, and many others.

You can also use affiliate software that installs in your CGI directory. I use Ultimate Affiliate Package (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/groundbreak.htm, $197). The program is great, though support is iffy. Another option is Wes Blaylock's Little Salesman (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/little_salesman.htm, $147).

7. Develop a Free Service

A great way to get links to your site is to develop a free service that is somewhat unique. If you have an online Bible, a mortgage calculator, a game, a useful database, etc. you'll get lots of people linking to your site just because it's helpful for their site visitors.

Don't underestimate the amount of work involved to develop a unique resource, bring it to excellence, and maintain it at an excellent level. But if you're willing, you'll get lots of links and traffic. Plus you'll receive mention in both the print and online press.

8. Provide Lots of Great Content

There's no substitute for lots of great content. Content is King. The larger the site, the more importance Google sees in the site. If (as Leslie Rohde contends) Google doesn't discount internal links, then "the site with the most pages wins," so long as your pages link to each other. In addition to increasing PageRank, each article -- with its own unique title and keyword pattern -- increases the size of the funnel that sends visitors to your site. The more helpful content you have, the more others will be motivated to link to articles on your website. Of course, one way to build content is to archive each of your e-mail newsletters on your site.

That's pretty much how you execute a linking strategy.

Of course, a year or two from now search engines will have evolved some more, and new recommendations will be appropriate at that point. But a bundle of key links to your site will always be in style.