Having a website is important, but having a website your customers can find is critical to the success of your online business. A tried and tested method for improving search engine rankings is through a gradual increase of inbound links.

As I’m sure many webmasters are aware, Google regards inbound links as one of the most important factors in determining a site’s page rank. But many misunderstand the key to a successful web marketing campaign.

People try to get as many links as possible as soon as their site or marketing campaign goes live, and many fail as a result. People try all the scams in the book to boost page rank, and consequently get kicked out of Google. Put simply – time and research is the key to successful link building.

The Importance of Industry-Specific Keywords
To ensure your links remain relevant, up-to-date and specific, it is vital to spend some time doing keyword research. First, compile a list of keywords you think people might use to find your website. Try to make this list as extensive as possible, and include as many variants of each keyword as possible.

Using a keyword selection tool to source keyword volumes and additional keywords will broaden the keywords you are targeting. It will also allow you to really focus on the keywords that are most specific to your site, and to target keywords that people are actually using to search for your website. But remember, be realistic – only target keywords that are specific to what you do.

The Importance of Links from Relevant Sites
When building links, it is important not to jump on the bandwagon and set up as many inbound links as possible straight away. Researching quality links from quality sites is very important.

The sites need to be industry relevant, but it is also important to find out which page your link will appear on. Pages which are well optimised are very valuable, look out for sites with a decent amount of keyword-optimised content and title tags. Try to avoid spammy-looking websites with little or poorly-optimised content and lots of banner ads – links from these types of sites are worthless.

It is important to get links on pages that are indexed by Google, and ideally, have a healthy page rank. You can check this by copying and pasting the exact URL into Google. If the page is indexed it will appear in the Google results. However, it is also important not to prioritize sites with a high page rank over sites with relevant content.

Optimising the Anchor Text and Link Description
So you’ve found the keywords people are using to find your website, and sourced industry-relevant sites. The next step is to optimise your anchor and description text for the keywords you are targeting. This way, your anchor text is telling the search engines what the page is about. So instead of saying ‘Click Here’ you might say ‘Buy Green Widgets’.

Deep Linking
Deep links go straight to a sub-page rather than a generic home page. These links are really beneficial because they enhance usability - you are taking the user directly to the page they are looking for, saving them clicks from the home page. They also help boost page rank on other pages, therefore improving your ranking for a wider range of keywords. When writing anchor text and descriptions for deep links, it is important to optimise the text for the keywords specific to that sub-page. For example, if your site sells green widgets, you would use these keywords in the anchor text and description that links to the green widgets sub-page.

The Importance of Being Patient
It takes time for Google to update its copy of the pages that link to you. The links do not have any value until Google knows they are there. The relevance of the linking page is evaluated each time someone searches, and this determines how much of a boost it will give your rankings. This is why ensuring that links are placed on topical pages on relevant sites is so important.

Building links is a very important task - link popularity is one of the ways Google evaluates the web pages they include. Put simply - spend time researching relevant keywords, find topical websites with links on pages with good PR’s, and write anchor text and descriptions that contain your keywords.

Tessa Rogers – SEO Specialist
Zeta Commerce Design

Zeta Commerce Design is a team of dynamic and dedicated professionals who design, develop and market high-quality products within agreed budgets. In addition to bespoke web development and marketing, we create engaging brands and highly-polished printed works to ensure consistency throughout your online and offline identity. Located in Poole, Dorset, with a client base established over 7 years; we have a proven track record of turning ideas into success.

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