Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

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I am a big fan of links. I love ‘em. They are currently the driving force for good rankings, and they can be used effectively to do great things for a site. If linkage is managed correctly fantastic traffic and business can result from it. I’m not a huge fan of waste. There’s such a thing as link waste. Namely, using anchor text that won’t be beneficial to someone’s site. Here’s what I mean…when I link to Aaron Wall’s site (which if you read you’ll see I do often), I don’t link like this: Aaron Wall. I link like this: Aaron Wall has one of the best internet marketing books about search engine optimization on the entire planet. While this seems like a painfully obvious point, I see SEO professionals using just site name, or names like this all the time (call it a pet peeve).

Why do I do this? Well, mainly because chances are Aaron will rank for his name as long as he has his website. Also because by ranking for “best internet marketing book” he hits a long-tail keyphrase that may actually bring some new visitors and potentially even sales to his book. This is not to say that all links should be sales and rankings driven. Only that as a responsible blogger and web site owner that you should be a good friend and spread the link love how it was meant to be spread. Contextually placed links (links within the body of a paragraph or sentence) have much more benefit than one-off navigation links or footer links. USE THIS POWER WISELY. Help your friends out. Give them the best possible links that you can. Manage your link love for maximum benefit.

Best practices for linking to your friends

• Link within your body copy whenever possible.
• Use multiple word phrases that AREN’T the norm (example: internet marketing information or search engine optimization tips and techniques vs. stuntdubl or todd).
• Deeplink to important site areas.
• Use contextually relevant words around their link.

So yeah, basically spend a little extra time, and write a couple sentence description about the site. Link up a few of the best words back to the most relevant area of their site. The search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated with link analysis and block level analysis that can determine the quality of a link. Might as well do your best to serve up the highest link quality that you possibly can.

Spread the love. No need to wear a condom.

Tags: Link Development, Search Engine Optimization