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Advanced Link Building

As all search engines use some form of link analysis in the ranking algorithms, the SES session  on "Advanced Link Building" was a must attend event from which a good deal of practical information was provided to attendees.

The undisputed leader of links Eric Ward started the session with a discussion of link reclamation (or the process of keeping (or reclaiming) the links you have) and holistic link building.

If you are moving your site (say for instance changing your domain name) link reclamation can be very difficult. Especially if you are moving your site (to a content management system for example). One of the things that you can do is to maintain the same file structure and file names and use 301 redirects. ward suggests to "always mind your server logs" and analyze what pages are still receiving traffic after a move. You will know that there are outstanding links which continue to send traffic to nonexistent pages when you see 404 error pages. At that point you can either reinstate the previously deleted page or set up a redirect.

Ward also discussed holistic link building. Since your website is much more than just your home page you can have external sites link directly to different section of your site which provides an immense amount of value when it comes to link popularity. Say for instance you host multimedia files or a forum at your site. Submit inclusion requests at quality sites and submit a link directly to the content (multimedia or straight HTML) hosted on your site. This also works for podcasts and white papers or any content for that matter that you develop that others would be interested in is a great opportunity to build links.

Todd Friesen discussed internal linking structures and encourages those interested in advanced link building tactics to  always have a sitemap and use anchor text in any internal link structures. "People need to start looking at their own sites first before starting an external link campaign," said Friesen.

Greg Boser of WebGuerilla discussed how to develop an effective external linking strategy. Starting by identifying the most visible sites within your space, it's important to first extract and analyze the backlinks from the major search engines (including information such as what are the unique domains and IPs of the sites your are interested in as well as what anchor text being used. Building a profile of each competitor that outlines the types of tactics being used will provide you insights into the cost/benefits of the various tactics being used and which ones you should emulate, which make sense for your organization and which you may want to avoid.

A Specific Example of Link Building In Action:
Say for instance that you provide some form of download. How do you get links and in turn people to visit your site? Give something away for free, ask for embedded link with descriptive anchor text or alt attributes and develop relationships with those directories specifically within your niche. This will enable you to develop long term, deep links to your site.

What should you avoid in link building?
Develop or use a system that enables you to get credit for your affiliate links. That means no third party systems such as commissionjunction (cj.com) which obscure URLs. 

What should be your next step?
Expand your knowldege about linking in the Search Engine Watch Linking forum, hosted by Chris Boggs of G3Group. Chris will also contribute to the upcoming issue of Website Services Magazine. Also consider visiting a Website Services sponsor in LinksToYou.com, one of only pure, ethical link exchange networks on the Web.
Posted Dec 07 2005, 04:54 PM by Administrator
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