Whether you’re writing articles for website content or for syndicated articles, a Linking Strategy is a good idea. There are three types of links you should consider adding…
1. SEO Link.
2. Authority Link.
3. Self Serving Link.
Let’s look at these three types of links, define what they are, and show you how you can utilise them as part of your Linking Strategy.
SEO Link
In your article writing, you should consider SEO. Think about not just who you want to write to but how the search engines will categorise your article. Beyond your primary keyword phrase, consider using another phrase you’re trying to rank for and link within your article to a relevant article. Wherever possible, this article should relate to the person reading the existing article.
Authority Link
When you point to a URL that’s considered an authority on the topic, you’re doing two things:
1. You’re giving your reader some place where they can get more info about the topic at hand. This isn’t typically a competitor’s website. It might be something like Wikipedia or a .edu site. Look for a site that’s relevant, helpful, and consider checking the pagerank as well. If it’s higher than the pagerank of the site you’re posting the article on, great. If it’s a site with “dofollow”, even better!
2. You’re pointing to a site that’s highly relevant to the topic at hand. This tells search engines what your site is about.
Self Serving Link
Quite often the self serving link and SEO link are one in the same. That depends, of course, on the layout and comprehensiveness of your article. A self serving link can often be a call to action link such as, “to learn more visit keyword phrase”. By linking your keyword phrase, you’ll do two things.
1. You’ll improve the SEO for the article.
2. You give people a place to go where they can learn more, buy now, sign up, etcetera.
Note: You can’t always include all of these links as some syndication sites have strict editorial guidelines but where you can include links back to your site, you should.
Where Should You Link
There are various linking strategies employed, depending where the article is posted and what your desired call to action is. What’s most important is that the article is written with quality and value in mind. After you’ve done that, look through the article and see how you can link to your advantage.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2012
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sean,
Great explanation here on the differences!
As the quality and linking strategy for articles can be so important it pays to have a plan in place. I guess this is something that comes with time and experience.
I don’t actually know to many “authority” sites that employ “dofollow” but agree that this would yield great benefits.
Sean,
Thanks for the info. I’ll read it over a few times to get a good understanding. I’m also looking forward to trying some of these tactics before I blog about my experiences in trying. Thanks for the tips.
John Sternal
@sternalpr
It seems to be very important how you set up your linking strategy.
I have used Wikipedia as a site to link to. At this stage I haven’t looked too deeply at other authority sites. I will get started on that and see what I can come up with.
There’s also the internal linking (linking to article/pages within your own site) which helps to get you up the google/search engine ranks.
It definitely pays to think about your links and not just put anything (or no links at all) onto your page or article. Thanks for pointing out what to look out for in article linking strategies.
Hi Sean,
When you’re talking about SEO links and choosing another keyword phrase apart from your primary one; do you mean that this secondary one should also be bolded, italicised, underlined and linked once as well? In addition to the primary one?
Thanks for the linking strategies, I will definitely put them to good use.
In that part of the article, I am referring to simply adding an anchored text link to another of your articles (if the target keyword of that other article pops up)