If you have a site you’re trying to optimise for search engines that’s a blog, one of the greatest ways you can optimize it is to give it some link love. Consider putting up some or even all of the following types of links into every blog post you write. Here are three types of link love and why they’re good for your SEO:
Link to Yourself
Why give someone nothing else to look at on your site? Link in posts to other posts that are related to the topic at hand. That way, when your visitor is done reading, they’ll find something else to look at. The longer they’re on your site, the more likely they’ll buy something or subscribe.
Link to Others
Linking to other sites in your niche does at least two things. First, it shows search engines that you are relevant to your topic because of the linking between sites. The other site might allow track backs which will show as links and comments on their blog posts and this could also result in people blogrolling you, visiting your site and linking to you in their posts as well. Wherever possible link to sites with as good or better a page rank as you.
Link to an Authority
If you link to a site that has a high page rank on your site, this does several things. It helps with your page relevancy and can pull your own site rankings up. It also helps readers understand what something means. For instance, linking to Wikipedia is considered linking to an authority. When you do it, tell the link to open in a new page so that a visitor checking the definition of a term won’t leave your website and not find their way back easily.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sean,
I thought it was not a good idea to link to people who are your competitors. At what point do we start to link to blogs that are in the same niche as ours?
Should I be less worried about losing readers to these sites and more concerned about building relationships that might be beneficial in the future?
Hello Sean,
I love linking back into my own site with previous blogs, especially if it is on the same/similar topic.
Also linking to other blogs within the same Niche helps so that the viewers can see what is out there and have a chance to compare.
I also link to another page so that my orginial page is always open. It helps with someone who is reading to be able to keep reading the same page, and open as many other pages as possible from the same blog.
Cheers
Lisa
Hi Sean
These are all very creative and fantastic ideas and also very practical.
I can see how getting links from other blogs will make my site more interesting and put more content on my site. It will also give it a different flavour as it written by someone else with a different knowledge base
Like wise when I reciprocate or link to someone else, they will be able to enjoy the same benefits and I will keep in mind to link to someone in the same ranking or better.
I frequently link to other related articles on my blogs. I also like to link to Wikipedia for further elucidation of my visitors and I always open up the link in a new tab or window. God bless target=”_blank”. When I’m mentioning other bands on the Grateful We’re Not Dead blog I always link to their website if they have one and if they have a CD I’ll link to a site that sells it.
So I guess I’ve been instinctively doing the right thing over the last few years. Now I guess I should try selling something.
What does target=”_blank” do Don – how do you use it?
Hi Peter,
When you are building a link the target tag can force the browser to open the link in a new tab or window. The structure is as follows:
Link text
Hope that helps.
Don
Here I’ll try that again. I’ll leave extra space and maybe the system won’t turn it into an actual link.
Link Text
OK I’ll leave out the opening and closing brackets:
“a href=”some url” target=”_blank”>Link Text</a"
OK the stat is
I love being able to set up the link to open in a new window – makes you feel happier to make the link to another site!
I saw this before but it didn’t sink in! So now have cut and pasted it – I think I need to put it on the wall in front of me as a reminder though. Good ideas!
It’s an easy one to apply if you are using Wordpress Peter. When you add a link, just choose which target option you want out of the 4 options.
If you are linking to another page on the same site, it can be a good idea to open in the same tab, for external linking I would be using the open in new tab option
I am glad that I have been improving my SEO with link love – but I need to work more on linking out to more competitors/other niches sites as I haven’t really done that as best I could as I have been worried about my visitors jumping ship. Internal links and links to Wikipedia have been my main practice.