Because of the way Search engines work, links to your
website from outside websites are crucial to ensuring you
receive a high search engine ranking. Just a couple of links,
properly set up, could make the difference between your
ranking at #23 and your ranking at #500 – and that is the
difference between being seen by searchers and not being
seen at all.
How Linking Improves Your Rank
Search engines catalog your content, looking for keywords
that they then use as criteria for ranking you. But keywords
aren't the only thing that determines your rank. They can't
be, especially with popular keywords; there are too many
pages vying for the same high status on the search engines.
A better way to determine how well a web site matches the
keyword criteria a searcher inputs is examining how they are
linked to other sites.
Part of what search engines look at is how many times a site
is linked to from other sites. Sites that are more frequently
linked are more likely to be good information resources,
which are exactly what people using search engines are
looking for.
Sites that are well-correlated with a search term are more
likely to be linked to from other sites, and the best ones are
probably going to be linked to from sites with identical or
related keywords. For instance, a dog grooming company
may recommend their customers to go to Dogs.com for
more information on how to keep a dog's coat healthy. Both
sites probably have "dogs" as a primary keyword, and
therefore that link gets rated high. Chances are good that a
person searching for "dogs" is going to be looking for
information like that on Dogs.com.
Sites that have the highest degree of correlation with a
keyword are more likely to be linked with that keyword; for
instance, if you want to link to the New York Times, you're
probably going to use the words "New York Times" on the
link itself.
What this means to you is that the perfect link:
 Comes from a site with similar information to yours,
but not competing,
 Uses your keywords in the link term itself, and
 Is one of many similar sites linking to your page.
Now that you know what you're looking for, how do you get
it?
Acquiring Links from Other Sites
Great content is the key to getting links from other sites. Put
yourself in the position of choosing links: what are your
criteria for recommending a website to your customers?
First, the website has to be complementary to yours, not a
direct competitor. Second, it has to look professional – this
reflects on you. Third, it has to have great content that you
cannot duplicate.
The third criterion is the most difficult to achieve. You can
rewrite information on other websites; if it's been picked up
from an article directory (more on these in a moment), you
can go out and put the same information yourself. The key
to great content other sites cannot duplicate is continuallyfresh,
quality articles. You would send your customers to
someone else who always had the latest news, right?
This is what you want your site to achieve: professionalism
and an article bank that is continually updated with new
articles, corrections and updates to old articles, and similar
items. Blogs are good, as are newsletters. Once you're ready
with your content, you can approach other webmasters.
You already should have a pool of potential trades; they're
the websites in your niche market (outside your direct
competitors) that you already visit. All you have to do is
email the webmaster of the site politely, sending a link to
your site and asking if he or she would like to trade links. In
certain informational sites, you can instead ask if they would
like you to donate an article to their collection; most will
happily take good-quality articles, leaving your name and
URL intact in a resource box at the end.
Article Directories: Another Way to Link
Donating articles, in fact, is a great way to get links in
exchange. There are several article directories online with
thousands of quality articles free to the public; the only
thing the authors require in exchange is that nothing in the
article or in the resource box be changed. If you have a
great article you think others would like to pick up and put
on their own websites, submit it to an article directory. Be
certain you set up the URL link with your keywords so that it
gets those bonus search engine points.
Now you're done, right? Nope. To keep your links fresh and
growing, you must do this regularly. Schedule time for
yourself every week or month to grow more links for your
site, and to review everything you have right now. And
watch your ranking in the search engines rise.