Next
to
onsite optimization, your
back link profile is the most important
factor in search engine rankings.
Think of the web as a giant popularity contest, the more links pointing to your site, the better you'll rank.
Not sure how many links you have and how many you'll need? Check your link count with Yahoo's Site Explorer tool.
Type "link:www.yourdomain.com" in the Yahoo.ca search box and this will show you how many links you have, and the URL's of the sites linking to you.
"Inlinks" is the number you want to look at - this shows the number of external websites linking to your site (See this screenshot).
Now compare your link count to a few of your competitors listed in the top 5 of Google the same way and you'll quickly see how your site stacks up.
Contact us today and see
what our link campaigns can do for your rankings.
Types of Links
Now that you have some concept of your link count and how many links you'll need to be competitive, how do you get them? Two ways - naturally, or by buying them.
Natural links
The main problem with natural links is that you have no control over how and where other sites link to you.
It also takes a long time to build up the number of links - as in years. And be prepared to spend a lot of money on web development as you'll need to set yourself apart from other sites in your space in order for other sites to want to link to you.
At the end of the day, nothing guarantees you'll get the links you need and you have zero control over the anchor text used for the links. Most natural links wind up being your domain name, which isn't as effective as keyword based links.
Sponsored links
Within sponsored links there are two primary types - static site links and blog links.
1.) Static site links are
typically found on the homepage of a site, as part of the main
navigation in a prominent location and are designed to provide both
traffic and link power.
2.) Blog links are posts on
various related blogs that are designed for traffic and link power.
We employ our own team of veteran bloggers who's posts will be written in a neutral manner (non promotional
& news oriented perspective), so there
aren't any issues with the posts being viewed as sponsored or as
endorsements for products or services.
The best thing about sponsored links is that you can control the anchor text to focus on your target keywords and you also control the growth rate.
The biggest difference between the two types of links is that you have to pay for static links every month and the minute you stop paying, the link comes down.
Blog links on the other hand remain active for the life of the post, and you only pay once. This helps grow the total link count over time.
Because static links tend to carry a little more weight than blog links we recommend a mix of both for best results.
Other influencing factors
Anchor text. This
is the actual word(s) used in the link itself. This needs to
be the same, or related, to the term you're looking to rank for.
For example - if we're trying to rank you for garden sheds then we'll
set your anchor text to terms such as garden sheds, sheds,
storage sheds, etc... And while its true that any link is better than no link, having
the anchor text set as
www.sitename.com won't produce anywhere as near the same impact as having the
text targeted.
Landing page(s). We'll make sure that you're
mixing it up a little, but place most of the weight towards the page
that's best related to the term you're targeting. Typically a
70% weight towards the targeted page, 15% to the homepage, and the
remaining 15% to other pages that make sense. Too many links
pointing at just one page can trip alarms with the search engines so
we'll be careful not to over do it.
Growth rate. For existing websites, the growth at which you
introduce new links to your site needs to be carefully monitored.
We can't roll
out 400 links in one month when historically your site has been
receiving 5-10 links a
month as this would risk of setting off alarms with the search
engines. We'll make sure that there is a slow but steady ramp
up in the links so the growth pattern doesn't look out of place.
Time
requirements.
Once we've rolled
things out completely, you can expect to see ranking improvements with
the terms we've targeted within 3 to 6
months.
We provide historical ranking reports every month for all your targeted terms so you have an easy to read graph showing the effectiveness of the links.
Once we've achieved the desired rankings, we can change up the terms we're working with, rotating with a new set. The number of terms you can work with is largely dictated by your budget.
Real world examples. Let us show you what our SEO services have done for a few of our clients - contact us with details of your site and we'll be happy to provide some real world ranking examples.
Our link campaigns have proven their worth time and time again - across many different categories for both brand new, as well as established sites.
Our link campaigns, coupled with onsite optimization, have taken search terms that previously weren't even in the top 100, and within 1-6 months, have driven them to number 1. And not obscure long tail phrases, but for single phrase, ultra competitive terms dominated by big players.
This stuff really works.
Contact us today and see
what our link campaigns can do for your rankings.