Chapter 6 (Part-B): METHODS FOR EFFECTIVE SEO - Links

Part-B; METHODS FOR EFFECTIVE SEO 

(LINKS)

Crawlable link structure

Just as search engines need to see content in order to list pages in their massive keyword-based indices, they also need to see links in order to find the content. A crawlable link structure - one that lets their spiders browse the pathways of a website - is vital in order to find all of the pages on a website. Hundreds of thousands of sites make the critical mistake of structuring their navigation in ways that search engines cannot access, thus impacting their ability to get pages listed in the search engines' indices.

Below, we've illustrated how this problem can happen:

In the example above, Google's spider has reached page "A" and sees links to pages "B" and "E". However, even though C and D might be important pages on the site, the spider has no way to reach them (or even know they exist.) This is because no direct, crawlable links point to those pages. As far as Google is concerned, they might as well not exist - great content, good keyword targeting, and smart marketing won't make any difference at all if the spiders can't reach those pages in the first place.

Link Anatomy

In the above illustration, the "" tag indicates the start of a link. Link tags can contain images, text, or other objects, all of which provide a clickable area on the page that users can engage to move to another page. This is the original navigational element of the Internet - "hyperlinks". The link referral location tells the browser (and the search engines) where the link points to. In this example, the URL http://www.jonwye.com is referenced. Next, the visible portion of the link for visitors, called "anchor text" in the SEO world, describes the page the link points to. The page pointed to is about custom belts, made by my friend from Washington D.C., Jon Wye, so I've used the anchor text "Jon Wye's Custom Designed Belts". The "" 

tag closes the link, so that elements later on in the page will not have the link attribute applied to them.

Each link to a page is, if you like, a vote of confidence for that page. The more links that point to an individual page (and globally to the site as a whole), the higher the collective vote of confidence for that page (and/or site) becomes, and the more important the page is deemed to be by the search engines.

This is the most basic format of a link - and it is eminently understandable to the search engines. The spiders know that they should add this link to the engines' link graph of the web, use it to calculate query-independent variables (like Google's PageRank), and follow it to index the contents of the referenced page.

Links from authority sites are probably the single most significant factor in boosting your site’s overall rankings in the SERPs. A single link from, say, the CNN.com or BBC.co.uk home page could be worth more to your site in terms of ranking and exposure than countless links from smaller, relatively unknown sites. Authority sites, by their very nature, also tend to be high-traffic sites, and you’ll inevitably garner some direct traffic as people click through to your site via the link.

Link building tips

Generate truly valuable content that other sites will want to link to:

These one-way unsolicited links are by far the most valuable kind. Searchengines love them and see them as a genuine endorsement of onesite by another. As your site becomes more visible, the contentwill organically attract more links, which in turn will improve yourvisibility, attracting even more links. When it works, this process isself-perpetuating, leaving you free to concentrate on quality content,while the links look after themselves.

Let people know your site is out there:

People can only link to your site if they know it’s there. Promote your site at every opportunity, especiallyin places where you know there are other website owners. Use themedium to your advantage. Online communities, forums, socialnetworking sites and e-mail lists all offer great opportunities to getyour site URL out in front of people who can link to it. Blogs are another source of potential links – some blogs are incredibly popular,and bloggers are noted for their affinity to linking. Try submitting a few poignant comments to high-ranking blogs in your sector (dothis responsibly; aim to add real value to the discussion rather thansimply promoting your site – see Chapter 7 for more on using blogsto promote your site).

Create your own blog:

A blog can be an incredibly powerful promotionaland link-building tool, if used wisely. If you have strong opinions,or a high level of knowledge in your industry, and you’re happy to write regular posts, setting up a blog is easy and can be a great way to increase both visibility and incoming links.

Network, network, network:

Use your network of contacts both onlineand offline to promote your site and encourage people to link to it,and pass it on to their own network of contacts in turn. If people lookat your site and like what they see they may well link to it.

Ask the people who link to your competitors to link to you:

Use Yahoo!’s Site Explorer to find out who’s linking to your main competition for your selected search keywords. Approach those sites and ask them ifthey’d be willing to link to your site too. After all, if they link to yourcompetitors, why wouldn’t they?

Encourage links within content and with descriptive anchor text:

Links within content are preferable to links on a page that just lists links.Surrounding content helps to put a link in context, both for the user and for the search engines. You should also encourage descriptive anchor text that if possible and appropriate includes one or two of your chosen keywords.

Submit your site to high-quality directories:

Getting your site listed in high quality, well-respected online directories like the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com, which is free) and Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com, which charges an annual fee for commercial listings) can be a great way to get your link building started. These links will helpboth search engine spiders and that all-important human traffic to find your site. As leading directories are considered ‘authority’ sites by the major search engines, links from these sites will also help boost your ranking.

Use link bait:

Link bait is anything that will entice incoming natural links from other websites or users. Link bait can be an interesting or controversial article, a downloadable document or report, a plug-in that improves the functionality of a piece of software or – the ‘hot’link bait of the moment – widgets or gadgets (small applications that sit on the sidebars of either another website or our PC desktop) – or anything else that attracts incoming links. Be creative! Just stay withinthe search engines’ published guidelines.

Offer to swap links with a select few relevant, high-quality sites:

These are called reciprocal links. Although they are less useful in terms of SEO value than they used to be, they can still be used effectively in moderation. While the power of reciprocal links to boost your rankings has been diluted, they do help to establish relevance andauthority in your subject area – just be sure that you link to relevant, high-quality sites, and only swap links with a few of them. As a ruleof thumb, you should never link to a site that you wouldn’t genuinely recommend to your site visitors just for the sake of a reciprocal link.

Common reasons why pages may not be reachable.

Submission-required forms

If you require users to complete an online form before accessing certain content, chances are search engines may never see those protected pages. Forms can include a password protected login or a full-blown survey. In either case, search spiders generally will not attempt to "submit" forms and thus, any content or links that would be accessible via a form are invisible to the engines.

Links in un-parseable Javascript

If you use Javascript for links, you may find that search engines either do not crawl or give very little weight to the links embedded within. Standard HTML links should replace Javascript (or accompany it) on any page where you'd like spiders to crawl.

Links pointing to pages blocked by the meta robots tag or robots.txt

The Meta Robots tag and the Robots.txt file both allow a site owner to restrict spider access to a page. Just be warned that many a webmaster has unintentionally used these directives as an attempt to block access by rogue bots, only to discover that search engines cease their crawl.

Frames or I-frames

Technically, links in both frames and I-Frames are crawlable, but both present structural issues for the engines in terms of organization and following. Unless you're an advanced user with a good technical understanding of how search engines index and follow links in frames, it's best to stay away from them.

Robots don't use search forms

Although this relates directly to the above warning on forms, it's such a common problem that it bears mentioning. Some webmasters believe if they place a search box on their site, then engines will be able to find everything that visitors search for. Unfortunately, spiders don't perform searches to find content, and thus, its millions of pages are hidden behind inaccessible walls, doomed to anonymity until a spidered page links to it.

Links on pages with many hundreds or thousands of links

Search engines will only crawl so many links on a given page - not an infinite amount. This loose restriction is necessary to cut down on spam and conserve rankings. Pages with 100's of links on them are at risk of not getting all of those links crawled and indexed.

Links in flash, java, or other plug-ins

rel nofollow

Rel="nofollow" can be used with the following syntax:

Lousy Punks!

Links can have lots of attributes applied to them, but the engines ignore nearly all of these, with the important exception of the rel="nofollow" tag. In the example above, by adding the rel=nofollow attribute to the link tag, we've told the search engines that we, the site owners, do not want this link to be interpreted as the normal, "editorial vote."

Nofollow, taken literally, instructs search engines to not follow a link (although some do.) The nofollow tag came about as a method to help stop automated blog comment, guest book, and link injection spam (read more about the launch here), but has morphed over time into a way of telling the engines to discount any link value that would ordinarily be passed. Links tagged with nofollow are interpreted slightly differently by each of the engines, but it is clear they do not pass as much weight as normal "followed" links.