Linking Strategies

Increasing your ranking is good. That means your website shows up higher on the search results pages when people search with your top keywords with a search engine, like Google.

Relevancy is important though. When you have non-relevant links to and from your website, they can actually "hurt" your rankings, so be careful what you link to and be sure the links that you add are related to your niche or subject.

A word about "Link Farms": It was once popular to get many many websites to link to yours and visa versa to increase rankings. Well, the search engines became smart enough to know when links are not relevant and now are punishing your website for unrelated links.

Linking Strategies Can INCREASE Your Ranking - OR NOT

Some experts think that the fastest way to get your ranking high is to use the same keyword phrase with your top competitors and become their linking partner. This means you need reciprocal links - they link to you and you link to them.

One way to do that is with articles. See Write Articles for Free Advertising. The theory is that you might ask the webmaster of such a site to post an article that you wrote, relevant to your common niche, which has your website link in your resource box.

There are numerous tips and help for you to build the needed relationships given who owns these websites. You should know your competitor's websites and begin seeking the relationship you want with them.

If they are a high-profile site where you can advertise, consider it. At least find out what it costs. Maybe do it for a short time. Better yet, see if they will publish your articles for free. Many of them appreciate free content and you can submit your article without much trouble.

DON'T DO THIS: Irrevalent Links will HURT Your Ranking

There was a time when all you needed on your website was a bunch of reciprocal links and you would get rewarded. Not so anymore! Now Google and the rest are catching on and changing their spiders to rate the relavance of your reciprocal links.

Now the only seemingly unrelated links I add to my websites are my own. For instance, I do usually add my own niche website links in each of my websites, but otherwise, I only add those that are clearly relevant to the subject of the website content.

Blogs and RSS Feeds Increase Search Rankings

Essentially Blogs and RSS Feeds help with your linking strategies by adding more links to and from your website.

Blogs are free, and are really easy. In fact, when you use Google's BLOGGER.COM, you will have greater Google ranking because it is Google-owned.

Create one account on Blogger.com and create a new blog that has keywords closely matched to your website name or main keywords. Select a free template and enter some content that is related to your website and be sure to include a link to the "landing page" most directly related to the subject of your blog entry.

Post often and learn how to have the blog directories "ping" you. Check Technorati and see the options for registering your blog and having it pinged when you post new content.

Social Networking - Web 2.0 - What is That?

Social networking sites include everything from MySpace and Facebook to niche socializing sites and forums.

If you have a favorite hobby or interest, try to find a social site to join. It works best when your website is related to that social site. For instance, I joined Sisterwoman - a place to meet friends for women. They have several circles and groups about numerous subjects. If I post about my gardening experiences in their garden club, I might interest a few other gardeners to check out my garden website. They have decorating groups where I can post about related content and link in my signature to my decorating website. (That reminds me - I knew there was something I had yet to do!)

Videos posted to YouTube and other video sites are also new Web 2.0 tools. Your videos can have a bit of expert content about your niche and your signature with your link is all you need to get extra links and build your rank. Plus you should get more visitors too.

Ads Help Too

I also recommend that you try to run at least one Google AdWords campaign when your website is new, and perhaps add at least one Google AdSense to your website, at least for awhile.

Likewise, try to setup at least one MSN AdCenter advertising campaign to be recognized by MSN Search Engine. AND, I also like to use the ALEXA tools at least for awhile to get Yahoo recognition. It's not clear how these work, but my rankings increased faster on my websites where I tried these tactics.