Networking is an important part of business. Some people love it, others don’t enjoy working a room and talking about themselves and their business with total strangers. Whether you’re one of those people who like it or not, networking has many advantages. You can create new relationships and be aware of what’s going on in your industry. Other people also become aware of you and your business, providing you a path to more ‘known’ people in your industry.

A linking strategy for search engine optimisation works a little bit like a networking function. People who work the room and create relationships will have a larger net to cast when they need assistance in any area. They’ll also become well known as they talk to more people, which means they’re likely to be recalled when a customer needs a product or service.

The difference between a page one ranking and a page four ranking could be as little as a few good links from other authoritative websites. Who goes to page four of a results page anyway? Research shows that searchers are 75% more likely to search using a new keyword phrase than go to the second page, so being in the top ten is an absolute must in order to grab the attention of people searching for your product or service.

Why Links Work
It’s a fairly simple process – search engines follow links to find new websites. The breakdown of what is in these links is important, so let’s have a look at that:

URL
The URL is the address that’s used in the link. This has an impact in search engine rankings and end user experience. For example, if you sell footwear and you have a listing in a business directory for rubber thongs, you should be linking to your rubber thongs page, not your home page. It doesn’t make sense to make your potential customers click on your home page and then try and find your rubber thongs page from there. It’s a much better idea to link them straight to your page about rubber thongs.

When a search engine follows this link, if you home page doesn’t have much content about rubber thongs, it’s not going to be as relevant a result compared to linking to your rubber thongs page. Search engines want to go to the most relevant page for a link; if it’s not relevant, they won’t rank it.

Anchor Text
The text used within a hyperlink is called anchor text, which has a great impact on your search engine rankings. If used correctly, anchor text can really boost your search engine rankings.

Here’s two examples of anchor text:

Example 1
Jones Pty Ltd provides rubber thongs straight to your door with no fuss at a great price. Click here to go to our website.

Example 2
Jones Pty Ltd provides rubber thongs straight to your door with no fuss at a great price.

The first example uses the anchor text ‘click here’ and links to the company’s home page, whereas the second example uses ‘rubber thongs’ and links directly to the rubber thongs page within the site.

The difference? Let’s look at this from the perspective of a search engine.

If a search engine follows the link from the first example, what is the information available to assess this website? First of all, there’s the anchor text of ‘click here’. A search engine will see this page as being about ‘click here’, as this is the anchor text provided. Remember, search engines are mathematical machines which don’t understand what they’re reading – they determine results based purely on the information provided by the website. When the search engine follows this link to the website’s home page, it sees that the page isn’t about ‘click here’; it’s about Jones Pty Ltd.

Now let’s take a look at the second example. The search engine follows the link using the anchor text ‘rubber thongs’, which takes it to a page with lots of content about rubber thongs. This page talks about rubber thongs, and the page title, URL and description tag also use the term ‘rubber thongs’ or variations of this term.

The second example makes more sense to a search engine in terms of relevancy, and relevant results for users is what search engines strive to achieve. The second example holds much more weight and would rank higher than the first example.

Websites that link to you
Websites that provide a link to your site are also important when search engines evaluate your linking structures. It’s much better to have links from authoritative sites. Search engines also consider how many other sites link to the sites which are linking to you. Once again, I’ll mention that quality and relevancy holds more weight than the quantity of links. Links from authoritative websites that are relevant to the product or service you provide will help you achieve better rankings.

How do I build links to my website?
One way to build links easily is to find out which websites are linking to your competition and then ask these websites to link to you. You can do this by using the link operator (link:www.yoururlhere.com.au) - I prefer to use Yahoo in this instance as their data seems to be more accurate. Go to www.yahoo.com and type in “link:www.yourcompetitorsurl.com.au”. A list of websites which link to your competitor’s site will be displayed. All you need to do now is ask. Email them a request or fill in a contact form on their site and see if they respond.

Another way of building links is by using link-building software. This type of software typically scours the internet looking for suitable websites to approach for a link. The process can be a little slow but the rewards will come.

I find that offering unique, interesting information is the best way to get links. One idea is to write an article about a hot topic within your industry. Or offer to use your expertise and write an article for a well-known trade publications website – part of the deal will be they must link back to your website. A couple of good starting points for articles are “Top Ten Reasons Why…” or “Five Things You Should Know About”.

You could create a page that lists all relevant websites that have complementary products or services within your industry. A list of experts within your field and links to their blogs is another idea. (Make sure you ask them for a link back)

You can add your website to business directories as a way of building free links. There are hundreds of directories out there – it’s just a matter of adding your details to them over a period of time.

These are just some of the methods I use to create links for a website. Your imagination is the only limit – if you persevere the results in your rankings will be worth the time and effort you put in.