Search optimization can be a baffling and esoteric subject. Google’s search algorithm is a more closely guarded secret than the recipe for Coca-Cola. But for today, we’re going to break down one of the older and more important search tactics used to rank well in Google – links.

After all, you can handle all the on-page elements perfectly; proper title tags, great copy with just the right amount of keywords, proper H tags, etc, but if no one ever links to it, it probably won’t rank well. Why is that, you ask?

Simply put, a link is a vote for your site. Google sees links as a way of determining authority or relevancy.

In fact, before Google there was Backrub.
Google’s precursor in 1996 was called “BackRub,” a search engine research project headed by Larry Page at the computer science department at Stanford. Page reasoned that the entire Web was loosely based on the premise of citation – after all, what is a link but a citation? If he could design a method to count and qualify back links on the Web, as Page puts it, “The Web would become a more valuable place.”

Despite realizing that a raw count of links to a page would be valuable in assigning value/authority, Page also wanted to determine a methodology that would reveal not just who was linking to whom, but more critically, the importance of who linked to whom, based on various attributes of the site that was doing the linking. Sounds reasonable, right? A link from CNN should carry much more weight than a link from a 12 year blogger with three readers. So Page went on to develop a very complex algorithm that is now known as Google.

So enough on that, you’re here to learn about links.
Specifically “inbound” links, or links from other sites that link to you.

As stated previously, there are some links that are better than others. For example, Google values inbound links from .edu’s and .gov’s above other Top Level Domains because of their (supposed) non-commercial nature. But these are typically difficult to get so let’s focus for now on some basic link building tactics.

Link Building Strategies

Generic Link Building: This is the low-hanging fruit and often the first step in a link campaign. It involves submitting to directories, low-tier search engines and adding your URL to social profiles.

Content Link Generation: Specific content written for the purposes of distribution. Examples include press releases, article marketing, advertorials, blog sponsorships and product reviews.

Social Media – Social Bookmarking Link Building: As an added bonus, if you have compelling enough content you can actually drive a tremendous amount of traffic to your site with a front page of Digg link, for example. The list of sites to tackle is long but here’s some of the biggies: Twitter, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz and Slahsdot, to name but a few.

Alternative Media Links: This is for creation of videos, widgets, podcasts and apps, all of which link back to your main website.

Audience/Blogger Generated Links:  Creating contests/sweeps to allow users to create/share content and link back to our site. An example could be a photo/essay contest for bloggers or even a Twitter contest asking people to retweet a specific message for entry.

Wikipedia Links: Wikipedia is one of the greatest authority web sites in Google’s eyes. There’s probably not a web site that ranks better for more diverse keywords than Wikipedia. Despite Wikipedia instituting no-follow tags (code to tell Google not to pass along any “value” or “trust” in the link to help combat spammers), it’s hard to not value getting links there. An example of how to achieve this properly would be to publish an original/compelling interview with a prominent person in your vertical that would allow you to add this as a citation to this person’s entry on Wikipedia.

Organic Links: Creating stellar, unique content that receives links simply because it’s awesome. Because it’s shareable. Because it’s valuable. This is the best scenario and one that consequently takes the most effort.

Syndication: An excellent tactic when pairing up with an authority site. For example, a colleague here on the search team runs a popular MMA website and worked out a syndication deal with Yahoo! Sports. In addition to the content deal, on every article that runs on Yahoo! Sports (another one of the greatest authority sites on the web) there is footer copy with embedded links pointing to MMAjunkie.com.

Anchor Text

So allow me a quick word about the actual text within the link itself, which is called anchor text, a crucial element in link strategy.

In the following example, if you use “here” as the words users are going to click on, you’re telling search engines that the page being linked to is about the topic “here”. If you use “Anchor Text” as the anchor text, you’re more accurately telling the search engines the linked page contains information about “Anchor Text”.

Read more about Anchor Text
is better than
Read more about Anchor Text here.

It’s very important to determine what the optimal anchor text is when beginning a campaign.

So that seems like a good primer. We hope this has been helpful for you and your clients as you start thinking about raising your websites visibility in the search engines.

Search engine optimization is a process, not a project. It takes time and diligence to achieve those coveted top rankings and the (free) site traffic that is the reward.

How Many Links Do I Have?

One last actionable tip. If you want to see how many links your site (or a competitor’s site) has in Google, you can use the command: link:http://www.yoursite.com on Google and it will return the relevant results. Now, Google doesn’t supply all the links for reasons too long to go into here, so if you want a deeper dive try Yahoo’s Site Explorer. There are plenty of other online tools to help as well.

Or better yet, feel free to reach out to our search engine optimization experts to learn more.