| Inbound links of the two
are the most important. Unfortunately, it
is also the one you have the least control
over. You can look at inbound links as a
form of voting. If site A has a link to
site B, A is voting for B. The more votes
B gets from other sites, the more link-popularity
B gains.
So the most popular websites have the most
link-popularity to pass on. Ideally, what
you want to achieve is to get the most traveled,
and most popular websites that are relevant
to link to yours. Unfortunately, a good
webmaster from such a site realizes the
value of his own link, and might not link
to you, unless you had something in exchange,
Like either a nice wad of cash, or the ability
to reciprocate a link of equal value.
Therein lies the Catch-22. If you are just
starting out, and have no ranking with Alexa,
and a “zero” rating with Google,
a decent site doesn’t want your reciprocal
link. If you really want get things off
the ground, you may have to buy such a relationship,
and that can be really expensive. A good
news site, for example, may charge over
$2000/week to have your banner or ad running
on their index. More on how to get around
this in a later edition.
Outbound links are a bit different. They
work similar to references in a scientific
report. If you have references to the right
authorities in your profession, it shows
that you know what you are talking about.
You acknowledge the "masters"
and thereby put yourself in a category above
the ones that don't. Furthermore, if you
are linking to a real good site, and there
is a vigilant webmaster who notices the
link, you may have the opportunity to receive
a reciprocal link. A lot will rest on the
appearance and content of your site, as
well as your forwardness in asking for reciprocation.
Avoid the temptation to link to any and
everyone who asks. Not all links count the
same! Links from recognized authorities
in your industry count more than links from
a small private website on a free host.
It is also a bad idea to participate in
organized exchanging of unrelated links
between websites (link farming), to boost
your link-popularity factor. Most search
engines consider that to be spam.
Instead, focus on getting inbound links
from relevant major players in your field
- they are the only ones that really count.
In the past, I have given up some of my
best web real estate to banner exchange
programs that only produced 1% of the traffic
to my site. In addition, some of the banners
coming in only lowered the appearance and
credibility of my site.
Internal link popularity- Internal
Navigation
In addition to inbound and outbound links,
link structure on your own website has an
important role in determining the value
of each of your web pages.
The pages throughout your website that you
most often link to will gain the most internal
link-popularity. If one of your web pages
has 100 internal pages pointing to it and
another only has 10, the first web page
is more likely to be valuable to users as
there are more pages "voting"
for that page. If you are having trouble
getting any hits from engines, find your
niche subject, pick a decent page that has
lots of good content on it, and have a text
link on nearly all of your pages back to
it. You will see that one page break through
ranking ceiling you had been experiencing,
and more visitors to your site.
It is critical, of course, that the page
have all the important navigation readily
accessible, ie. index, other major sections,
etc. since that one will be getting the
most traffic.
So, if you follow these rules, you will
be positioning yourself for a pretty decent
search engine ranking. If you want an acronym,
think CORN
Content - (comprehensive, well written)
Optimized Code- (no unnecessary flashy scripts,
decent Meta content)
Reciprocal Links- (to and from relevant
sites, in a class above you as much as possible)
Navigation – (Complete internal navigation,
targeting your niche content to have most
links, hopefully to get on the first page
when the key words are googled).
Part
1- Increasing Web Traffic- The Basics
In Part 2 of
the "Increasing Web Traffic" story,
we will look at the 10 reasons why sites
don't get indexed.
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