In this article, I will focus on technical aspects of link building, while in the second part, I will show you real examples, tactics, and places to find links. PART 1 is more for newbies, while PART 2 is for those who already understand the techniucal aspects and need fresh ideas for planting and growing links (not on a link-farm, mind you).
WARNING! Before I tell you how to build links to your ecommerce site, let me tell you how not you. Not only because it is less liekly to work, but because going any other route is akin to sending out SPAM; a lot of people won’t like you, you will clutter up the web, and rarely works in the long run.
As Eric Ward says ”anyone can Google Map a sewage plant.” Too many online store owners I speak with ar looking for an EASY button, for an ecommerce site that has little or no value other than in the generic products it carries. Remeber that if it is too easy, then too many people are probably already doing it, and unless you are selling something completely new and different, you may have a tough time promoting your site in any way (not just SEO). Besides, the search engines are always trying to improve what they think is relevant for the people searching on the serach engines, so in a sense, they always try to make it harder for us to manipulate them in a sense. This applies to well established sites as well as those who want to open an online store for the first time.
Building links from other websites (a.k.a. backlinks) for ecommerce sites is tough stuff at times, especially if you are trying to be the next Amazon.com. Why? Because if you are selling the same thing as the next guy, why would people link to your website on their own? Your unique selling point can be a huge draw for gettings links to your site naturally, or with effort on your part, but the point is, if you think link building is easy for a site that sells shoes, then your in trouble, unless:
A: Your shoes, or the way to deliver your shoes, are distinctily different.
B: You can write content about shoes, or shoe niche, that is distinctly different.
Now that I have told you what link building isn’t, let me tell you what it is:
Basic guidelines for building high quality links
This list is roughly in order of most to least important, so stop reading when you have has your fill.
There’s a lot of nitty gritty detail on how to get good links, but generally speaking it often boils down to this
The higher the other site ranks for related terms, the better it is to try to get a link from them. For a simple example, if you are looking to get ranked high for the term classic 57 chevy’s, then maybe you can find a high ranking directory by searching on Google/Yahoo/MSN using something like: 57 chevy’s directory
Reciprocal links are dead
(e.g. If I link to you, you link back to me). Focus on one-way links. Reciprocal links are promoted by bad SEO companies, and used to death by uninformed website owners . Reciprocal links are not completely useless though, and may be useful for driving relevant traffic between sites, but don’t rely on them heavily for good rankings. Here is the problem with reciprocal links: Let’s say a link goes from site A over to site B; then a link is placed on site B pointing back to site A. Here’s what you have: A > B > A. Now, let’s repeat this strategy with a bunch of other websites, since I got a lot of friends with websites. If we did this a lot, and then drew a picture of how the sites were linked together, it would look like a daisy. The search engines see right through this. I know what you are thinking. Even 3-way trades aren’t gonna help you much (A >B > C > A), and could even hurt you if used too much.
Get links from relevant sites and pages
If you have a site about classic cars, and are trying to get a link from a site about alien kittens, think again. More relevance = better. You’d be much better off getting a link from, say a site about hubcaps or something related to classic cars.
Use proper anchor text (not always)
The links should use the keyword in the link text, or anchor text. Simply put, a link should look like this: “hot classic cars“, and not “click here to see hot classic cars”. As you can see, I have the actual keywords in the link itself. Also switch it up a LOT. Using the same phrases over and over spells disaster. Don’t worry if all your links dont have keywords in them. You are less likely to control the anchor text on a quality site anyways.
Using PageRank to recognize worthless pages
Getting a link from a web page with 0 PageRank is often an indicator of trust to some degree. Generally speaking, higher PageRank is better, but again, relevance and trust is more important than PageRank*. Use the Google toolbar, or one of these plugins to see Pagerank: SearchStatus (shows on page you are visiting), Firefox plugins: SEO for Firefox (shows in Google results). Links from link farms, or lots of sites with PageRank can spell disaster. I also like SEOinc’s free SEO toolbar for quick digging of info such as backlinks, ranking checker, etc… for Internet Explorer
Get links from trusted sites/pages
High trust sites are not like finding sites with high PageRank, but in a nutshell, older sites, with lots of inbound and few outbound links tend to have higer trust. .edu and .gov sites often fit this criteria which is why sometimes they are sought after. There are various free tools online for find such sites through link hubs. this almost means avoiding spammy, low-quality, link-farm sites. Also get them from new sites. Remember, the point is to mix it up. Even for the sake that a new site can eventually become popular and highly valuable to you in the long run.
Deep link
Don’t think that all links should point to your home page. Get highly relevant links to specific pages within your site, specific to those pages. The more targeted the better. E.g. getting a link from a page on a website that talks about various hubcaps from a 57 chevy, which links to a page on your website that talks specifically about the same thing.
Think, complimentary
Obviously you will generally be getting links from sites that are complementary and not competative.
Remeber, human vistors are real people too
Alexa.com and Compete.com rankings can also find sites with high traffic (maybe not high search engine rankings). You can’t forget about real people you know. Not only for the direct traffic, but when people find your site, they may link to it too. Heres a site that combines Alexa, Compete, etc… results
Recognize the NOFOLLOW tag, and realize its importance
Getting links from sites that have rel=”nofollow” in the code will not help your search engine rankings. Learn more about the nofollow tag here. You can look at the source code of a webpage usually to find out, or use a Firefox extension such as the SearchStatus or NoDoFollow plugins.
Track your results
Go to Yahoo search and type link:yourdomain.com This works for Google too, but Google only shows a few of your back links, unless you are using their webmaster tools. Again, the SEOBook toolbar and SEOinc toolbar mentioned above can help you do this quikly.
Build links slowly over time
Getting 50 links a day from day 1 looks suspicious to search engines. SEO takes time. Of course, if you get that kind of linkage naturally cause your site rocks, thats okay.
Avoid other bad practices
Examples include: Lots of links from a group of websites owned by yourself, or a couple people is not helpful (same C-class). Sites that are considered low-trust or spammy in the search engine eyes such as link farms.
ALWAYS mix it up
There are a million ways to get links. Think beyond the common practices: directories, article submission, social media, and ALWAYS mix it up. Otherwise, you may shoot yourself in the foot. This even means getting links from sites with PR 0. Focus on relevance! A 100 links all from directories is probably a waste of time if you have very few other types of links.
Natural links are the best
If you can create content and a site that causes people to want to link to it on your own, then you are done. I have done it. It wasn’t cheap. Most often, the best links are links that grow on their own. That is, when people find your site and think, “mmmm… I like this site, so I am going to link to it on my blog.“
Paid links is a mixed bag
One of the more grey areas, but if Google finds out, it will basically discredit those backlinks to your site. However, it’s fast and easy. Even if it looks like the page sells links, your link may be seen along side those. Paid directories are definitely more acceptable.
Long term
The longer you have a link to your site from another website, the better.
PART 2 of this guide coming soon!
It will focus on some practical ideas for finding places to get links from. Stay tuned
*This is my opinion. Some things in SEO are more cut and dry than others, and this is not one of them. I won’t always say when I state something that is not always agreed upon, so just be aware of that. I mention this simply because my audience is not deeply trained on SEO for the most part, and you can’t just believe everything you read online.
Basic instructions for constructing a link for newbies (if you are not using a program like Dreamweavaer/Expressionweb/CMS that does this for you). Ignore hte line breaks as they are not important/needed:
Here is an example link that I want to make:
Check out my favorite search engine
And here is the HTML code:
Check out my favorite <a href="http://google.com">search engine</a>
The link goes to Google.com. The anchor text is “search engine”. If I need to tell search engines not to give the link credit, I might also add a nofollow tag like this:
<a rel="nofollow" href="http//www.google.com"> search engine</a>
Oh, and one more technical tip, always use the same version of the link to your pages, such as this example: http://www.example.com is seen slightly different than http://example.com and http://www.example.com/index.html They each take you to the same page, but search engines have trouble with this a bit, so pick one and stick with it.
