Easy Ways to Optimize Your Existing Links
Every other article on link building that we meet on the Internet tells us why links are important, teaches us how to obtain inbound links describing a variety of link building methods. I totally agree that we need links and I’m always open to any new legal link building tactics. But I believe that in the pursuit of more and more new links, we often forget about backlinks we’ve already got some time ago. Do they still exist? Do they lead to the correct page on our site? Do they have the right anchor text? These are the questions we should ask ourselves.
So, let’s start by examining a couple of simple but necessary tactics that can help you manage and optimize your existing links. Here they are:
- Optimize your anchor text. As a marketer, you know that the link anchor text is one of the important, if not the primary, factor that drives traffic to your website. It’s by the anchor text that people find your website in search engines. Thus, your primary task is to ensure that your existing links have the right anchor text, i.e. your most loved keywords. A trite “Click here” or “Read more” is not the anchor text for your link you want. So, if you maintain a list of websites linking to you, visit them and review your links. If you find the anchor test you don’t like, contact the webmaster of the site and ask them to change “Click here” to an anchor text that contains your relevant keywords.
- Monitor your “Not Found 404” errors. Using Google Webmaster Tools you can discover who is linking to non-existing pages on your website as well as misspelled URLs. Go to Google Webmaster Tools -> Diagnostics – > Web Crawl and look at the “Not Found” report. There is the "Linked From" column. For every error in the report the "Linked From" column lists the number of pages that link to a specific "Not found" URL. You can click on the number of pages and in the separate dialog box you will see a list of pages that link to the specific invalid page on your website. So, if your “Not Found” report reveals a number of invalid links, you can drop a quick email to the site's webmaster asking them to repair that broken link. If the webmaster didn’t correct the link, you can use a permanent 301 redirect method to redirect the link to the right page.
- Monitor links to non-indexed pages of your website. If you prevent search engine bots from indexing certain pages on your website via robots.txt or meta-noindex, make sure anyone does not link to those pages. If you discover such links, contact the webmasters of those sites and kindly ask them to link to a different page on your website.
Well, using these 3 link optimization tactics you can ensure your existing backlinks are valid and up-to-date.
And now let’s return to link building. To continue, I’d like to share with you 4 link building tips that, on my opinion, are worth to be covered. Probably you’ll find something new for you that you would want to put into practice. Here they are:
- Go to a search engine and type your company name or your personal name into the search box. Click Search. Yes, you will search for web sites that mention your company name or your name. Look at the environment where your name is mentioned and whether there is a link to your site. If there is no link and the content is appropriate (one of your article published on someone else’s site, or product review or some other relevant content), you can contact the site’s webmaster and ask them if they are willing to add a link to your website since they mention your name.
- Create useful tools and give them for free. A great example is our double opt-in manager plugin for WordPress blogs. The plugin is free. Anyone can download it and install onto their blog. The plugin places a signup form on the blog. You can see an example of the signup form on this page.
- Offer a win-win deal to your visitors. You can ask your website visitors to write a review of your product or service including links to your site and publish the review on their website. In return you’ll give them a discount for your product or service, a free bonus or any other benefit you can provide.See an example how it can be done at this page.
- Create “Link to us” page on your site. It’s a good idea to have a web page where you tell people how they can link to you: which URLs, anchor text, logo they can use. This may encourage people to link to your site and will most likely help you avoid invalid link.
This is only a tiny fraction of creative link building tactics you can use. I’m sure you can come up with much more that will be quite appropriate for your company and market niche.
To conclude, I would like you to note that there is no advanced link building tactic. For me, “advanced” means a fast and reliable thing that brings immediate results. But it’s not the case of link building. You can’t spend a few hours, build a hundred of links and quite hoping they will work for you for years. Building links is like building a brand. It’s a gradual and long-term process. And it requires time. Much time.
In the meantime I'd love to hear your comments on link building and optimization. What did you try? What worked best? What failed? Leave me a comment below and let's discuss.
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Tags: anchor text, inbound links, optimize links, search engines, webmaster tools
Comments (19)
I always enjoy reading these link-building posts and usually get quite a grin. I was glad to see shooting it straight. There r no short cuts to good link-building. It will take time and good intentions.
If I can add to your great recommendations, tr to concentrate your efforts to sites/pages that focus on your industry. Paying a 3rd-party firm to spray your links around the web onto random websites does nothing but dilute the contextual focus of your site. This is where FastBlogFinder really shines. Find blogs/forums that are discussing your expertise – and then contribute. If you add value, the hosting site/blog will be glad to grant you that valuable backlink.
Hi Julia,
Thanks for the interesting post. Clearly these are not the ‘traditional’ link building methods, but nonetheless, very effective.
Link building is not a sprint but a marathon and we need to continuously invest some efforts gradually and regularly, using a variety of methods.
Keep up the great work, and keep the great post coming!
Great post! Honest and sayin’ it like it is.
A big problem with many pushing the “internet Traffic” industry, amoung other industries, is that the message is usually “its easy, a monkey could do it”. The truth is, it is complicated to build your links and increase your traffic.
The primary ways that I have been using to increase my linking are;
Find and follow a handful (not hundreds) of quality sites/blogs related to your niche. Read new posts and reply with comments of value and that contribute to the discussion (not, ‘nice blog, thanks’),
Comment and answer questions within reputable public and private forums,
include link on social sites (ie twitter, stumble, Squidoo, etc),
It takes a lot of time and effort, to build a good blog business and any site that tells you otherwise is selling snake oil. This is a very detailed and realistic approach to link building.
Cheers!
Jeromy (AKA Hillbilly)
It’s funny actually, now you mention it, I have seen less and less ‘Link to Us’ pages on sites over the last few years. Few people bother with banners or buttons to share with their visitors (unless they are running affiliate sites) even though you don’t need an expensive graphic designer to create one, and yet there are still many people who do not know how to go about creating a link to a site they like to share with others.
Another tip I would add is use the link command in Google to find who is linking to you, and use your analytics package to monitor the same. You could be missing a whole new niche or target market if you don’t know who is linking to you at any one time.
Thanks for the post.
Just like anything in life – if it’s worth having, it isn’t easy.
If you want a site with any kind of visitors, not just two or three a week, well you do have to work at it.
Julia, your blog finder tool and all the hints and tips you divulge on your blog have been a brilliant help to me, I know that you are now and are going to be a respected authority on link building and it’s methods…. it’s a shame that you don’t offer these services so that I could outsource them to you, as I haven’t got enough time in the day
All the very best,
Andy
Don’t forget the importance of the anchor text on internal links.
This is effective, frequently fogotten and totally within your control.
Julia – I’ve only just started to use Fast Blog Finder (Full Version) and am very excited about the possibilities using this tool! Thanks for putting it out there!
Regarding this post – I liked what you said about anchor text the most. I was just terrible when I first started linking out from and to my Florida Mortgage Blog. Sometimes, I’d include as many as 5 words in a given sentence! Now – I pay special attention to the words I hyperlink to make sure that they are ones for which I’m trying to rank.
i also appreciate the link page idea. While I always try to provide anchor text for folks who want to link to me, it’s not always possible. A small amount of time taken to describe my preferences on a blog page will be time well spent. I’ll get to work on that soon.
I enjoyed these linking suggestions.
I’m glad you didn’t include reciprocal links in suggested linking strategies. Not only have I found them almost worthless but most of people I did this with have either taken them down or the pages they were on have lost ranking rather than increased. I spent a couple of days last week checking up on all the links I’ve shared over the last few years and barely 20% were active today.
I only do them today if there is a potential for traffic but not for creating juice.
Cliff
Julia, bonjour… One of the most reliable ways that I have found of building links is to syndicate my blog with other like minded individuals. If you look at the Google Friend Connect panel on my blog, you will see that I presently have 38 “Friends”; of these, 32 are people with whom I syndicate.
Whenever one of us in the group makes a new post, we, as a group, have agreed to give some credibility to that post on one or more of the social media websites. This either by way of a save, digg, clip, etc., and sometimes a comment on those social websites. All this social activity by our group serves to increase search engine visibilty and rankings, which in turn means that our posts receive greater attention by people outside our group (i.e. traffic).
Every time I post, I get more social activity and visibility – more visibility = more traffic = more visibility
As one of my colleagues puts it “We have a Perpetual Internet Traffic Machine”
Link building is ‘boring’, but it is a necessity. I spend a few hours a day until I get bored. But I do know if I didn’t do that I would slump down the search engine listings.
Your advice is spot on as usual, but a little simple. Most people on your email list are a little more advanced.
Hello Julia, on link building recently I posted a comment on a blog related to my video product, and the blog owner thought I was trying to steal his customers! not every one appriciates the value of links to their blog or site! I was amazed to say the least… enjoyed your post as always Sean.
I liked the way you express your thoughts and experience in the written form as in this post. But, the points that you have mentioned for link building is very difficult for most beginners although they are good points. Overall, this is a nice article. Thanks.
I agree with Cathy’s point above which is worth reiteration. When doing a links review such as this it is important to ensure that you have strong anchor text rich internal links. As you add new pages they will not have internal links unless you go back to some of those old articles and incorporate them. Look at which pages in your site have been indexed in the search engines and ensure that they are working hard for you with a smattering of internal links.
After some weeks of feeling my way through the SEO jungle, I have the feeling that I’ve reached the edge – the leading edge. If you guys don’t know where it’s at, then I give up. I’ve tried out the free version of G-Lock Blog Finder and although it’s frustrating to see such a large number of un-categorized ? results, nevertheless a 20 minute session saw me achive a DoFollow PR6 backlink. I’m going to keep at it like that for a while just to make sure that this approach really does bring PR and traffic benefits. If so, I’ll go for Gold.
I used to think that once you create a website/blog, you will have millions of people come rushing to your website.
When I started my first blog, I used to be scared of what I say on it and would often not post. But I soon realized that getting traffic to your site and building links to your website takes quite a while and alot of work. But some people still don’t seem to understand it.
Anchor text for inbound links is one of the most important factors in search engine optimization, just having links is not the only factor to consider, What the link text says is very important, so therefore, the link text is an important indicator that tells the search engines and visitors what your page is about. It’s important to make the most out of your link by choosing the right anchor text!
“Monitor links to non-indexed pages of your website”
This is a good tip, it has actually affected one of my sites before but have learn the tip, a while ago thanks!
I like the idea of “googling” your name or business and finding sites that mention you, but do not link to you. I bet that nearly all webmasters that are contacted would put a link up for you since they are mentioning you or your business.
I have an interesting problem that I do not know how to get around. I will have to brainstorm, or maybe someone could help me. I have classified ads on my site, and they expire after a certain time or the user will remove it because the item has been sold. These pages are indexed in the search engines, but a 404 error appears once the ad is gone. What should I do in this case?
I think people are getting smarter with their linking strategies. Webmasters are understanding that getting links from related niche sites is more important than just getting links full stop.
@John Morgan – Can’t you keep the page after someone removes the ad, but just put “this item is now sold”. Also i would put a link underneath to either the homepage or a category page if that’s possible.
For link building i think people also don’t take the time to try and improve the rank of the site which gives the link.
For example – If you build a squidoo lens which links back to your site, you should also get backlinks for the lens. Increasing the rank of the squidoo lens will increase the value of the link back to your site.