Link Building Basics: SES, San Jose 2007

Discover how search engines rely on link analysis as an important component for rank web pages. Learn also how to increase traffic to your site by building quality links in an appropriate manner.

Moderator:

• Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch

Speakers:

• Mike Grehan, Vice President, International Business Development, Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Christine Churchill, President, Key Relevance.

Bruce Clay's Mike Grehan has an interesting take on how search engine crawlers view the web. As a graph, apparently.

Search engines work on the system of an inverted index. They maintain only one occurrence of a word. Elucidating this with an example, Mike says to imagine the word hemoglobin in a textbook. If the word appears on certain pages, the word points towards those pages. The page becomes significant because of the word and the word because it is directed to the page.

Mike takes up the example of John Kleinberg, a professor who in 1998 presented a thesis on the prevalence of words in a page and how they would accordingly rank. Some students, in the same year wrote a thesis about PageRank. A quick search on the term, “Japanese auto manufacturer” will not show results like Mitsubishi, Toyota etc but once you add a hyperlink, it shows us the desired results. The gist of this example is that its not what you claim about yourself but what the rest of the community is saying about you that matters.

Now a days, its quality links that matter and not quantity. 10 essential takeaways:

1. Quality content always attracts quality links. Anchor text in links matter to search engines.
2. Search engines already have a pre-decided view of who matters. Use search engines to look for linking partners.
3. Paid and reciprocal links – As long as you do not go overboard with reciprocal links, its okay.
4. A good affiliate program can generate high traffic and achieve sales on the other hand it can also mess up your linking strategy.
5. ClickBank or Commission Junction are examples of redirected links that can mess up your direct links.
6. Don't be a snob about who you link with.
7. Avoid faking your link information of fake domains in order to redirect it back to your site.
8. Asking someone for a link is the same as doing business with the person. Work carefully.
9. Getting links can take up a long time, it is a good idea to get some professional help.
10. Create time spending content.

Next up is Christine Churchill the president of Key Relevance. Christine lay ost emphasis on research albeit it may take up some time.

Tips:

• To swap links with local businesses go to your local chambers of commerce.
• If your potential link partners do not respond via email, call them and speak to them. Many times people agree only because you took the effort of asking.
• Do not restrict links to just one source. Eg:- Avoid only linking to blogs. Because if yours is a site with many links from different sources you will come across as a renowned site.

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