| If you've read anything in the internet marketing | | | | Google and Yahoo, with Google being the most |
| arena while trying to promote your website, you've | | | | sophisticated of the two engines. Based on |
| no doubt come across the advice that you need to | | | | information from a Google patent application released |
| get links to your website in order for it to do well in | | | | a while back, experts surmise that Google will track a |
| the search engines. I'm not here to tell you | | | | number of factors when determining how to rate the |
| otherwise, only to point out that when someone | | | | value and authority of the link pointing to your site. |
| gives you advice on getting links, don't assume that | | | | Some of these factors include the topic of the |
| any and all links are helpful or desirable. You need to | | | | website linking to you. If it is about deer hunting and |
| learn to go after links that will give you the best | | | | your website is selling access to a website builder, |
| results for the least amount of effort. | | | | the link won't count as highly as if it came from |
| Years ago, in the early days of the internet, it was | | | | another website promoting a website builder or a |
| not uncommon for internet 'gurus' to council people | | | | web hosting company, web hosting directory, etc... |
| to place links on FFA lists in order to get traffic. | | | | Number of links on a page is also important especially |
| Besides these FFA lists, webmasters were | | | | when factoring in Google pagerank. When another |
| encouraged to get links from classified ads, webrings, | | | | website places a link to your page, it will transfer |
| link farms and all manner of beasts like these. These | | | | more pagerank to your website the fewer the links |
| links didn't help the average user find useful | | | | on their website. Depending on how much pagerank |
| information faster. In fact, if anything it made it more | | | | the other website has, your link may tansfer little or |
| difficult for people to find what they were looking | | | | no pagerank back to your website if there are too |
| for. | | | | many links on the page. |
| Years ago search engines were simple by todays | | | | Placement of the link on the page is another factor |
| standards. Back then you could often achieve top | | | | to consider. Advanced search engines like Google are |
| ranking for a particular keyword by simply repeating | | | | now trying to discount links that are obviously |
| these keywords over and over again. Early search | | | | advertisements or paid linking. To this end, links under |
| engines assumed that the more often a keyword | | | | partner sections, on links pages, on 'partner' pages |
| was mentioned, the more likely the page was | | | | are being discounted. |
| relevant to the topic. This, of course, was not true | | | | So what kind of links should you get? The best kind |
| and search engine companies eventually wisened up | | | | of links are keyword rich, contextual links within the |
| to this tactic. | | | | body of the web page. Links that are relevant to the |
| Getting a mass of links from websites that are not | | | | context of the page are going to get more attention |
| relevant to the topic of your website produces little | | | | that links that are clearly off topic. Including your |
| return. It does produce some return on some search | | | | targeted keyword between the html anchor tag is |
| engines but very little for the two biggest ones, | | | | also a good idea. |