Are you worthy?: Search Engines place big emphasis on how high your sites link popularity is. Be popular! Be link-worthy. If your content is poor and your site is not of a high quality, who is going to link to you? Very few, all but the desperate will say no. They are ways that you can request thousands of links; it’s not worth it if the site is poor. Worthy sites will be linked to naturally and without having to ask for the link. Feel free to trade links, but be careful. Set high standards.

Deep Links: This is where you have links to as many pages in your web site as possible. If all your links are to the Home Page you are telling the Search Engines that you have a site of little value and interest. When you have multi page links you are announcing that you have a site that is populated with worthy content, content that is in demand.

Image / Text Links: Search Engine spiders will follow the first link they find to any particular page. If you have image links in your navigation bar, include text links. Make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because spiders will not follow additional links to the same page.

Buying links?: This is ok, there are many directories that will for a certain time period and a certain fee provide you with links. The down side is that these directory sites send out more links than they take in. This being the case Google will see these sites for what they are, directories, and so the link value will decrease. I am not saying not to use these directories, please do, they form a part of an over all managed SEO program, just be aware of their value.

Reciprocal Links: How many times have you received n email asking for a link trade? If you link to me, I’ll link to you. Well that seems fair enough, if the site is good enough you may wish to link to them. A question to ask yourself? Is there a real benefit to your audience in having this link? If the answer is no, don’t have it.

Broken Links: Keep checking your site for broken links. Search Engines hate sites with broken links. It suggests that the site is not being looked after properly and that it is not current and up to date. Also, broken links stop the spiders from indexing your site. There are many link checkers available, just Google it.

Title Tag Incorporation:
Keywords into Title Tags: Title tags are critical to the success of a web site. They are given a very high weighting. Key word phrases should be repeated in your title tag.

Site Map:
Site Map: Web sites, big or small all need site maps. They need to be linked to and from every page on the site. As far as the Search Engines are concerned, every page on your site is but two clicks away.

Archives / Newsletters:
Newsletters: The great thing about archives is their longevity. If you write a newsletter or an article and it gets posted to an archive, that’s excellent. It will be linking to your site for years to come. Make sure that your article has a link to your site in the “About the Author” section. Many articles are published by organisations looking for content. You may become famous! The key part in all this is to become an authority. If you can do this through blogs, newsgroups and newsletters people will link to your site.

I hope the above helps you in the quest for SEO greatness!

Guy Fagan
Director - Lucidity Technologies