10 ways to build keyword rich inbound links by Rachelle Money, 5 November 2008
Creating keyword rich content goes well beyond writing a few articles for your site. Search engine optimization is a discipline which can be used in every corner of your website, including inbound and outbound links. In this article we show you just how easy it is to boost your search engine rankings simply by building keyword rich links.
Key points
- Linking text that includes your important keywords will give you a bigger search engine boost than if the linking text was just your domain name.
- You can’t usually control the linking text from external sites but you can influence it.
- The ability to build good relationships with people is often at the heart of successful link building.
To rank well in search engine results you need to score well on both ‘on the page’ and ‘off the page’ factors. On the page factors are about what is on your own pages and therefore within your own control; off the page factors are the links from external websites to your own, and these are much more difficult to control.
Most external links will use your domain name to link to you, but if you can persuade them to link using keyword rich linking text (sometimes called anchor text), then you’ll get a significant search engine boost.
So while AbeBooks.com would be pleased with a link like http://www.abebooks.com, they would be even more pleased with a link like used books from AbeBooks because the linking text contains one of their important keywords, ‘used books’.
For many website managers and owners, getting an external link of any kind is achievement enough, without having to manage the even more difficult task of persuading an external website to link to you using specific keyword phrases of your choice.
So how do you get keyword rich inbound links?
Choosing product and publication names that contain keywords will; and there are other methods to use that, if you persist with them, will bring you many valuable links.
But before we list them, you need to do some preparation:
a. Start by choosing 5-10 of your most popular keywords that you’re going to use in your initial link building campaign.
b. Now write variations of the links that you’d like to use. For example to create the link 'used books from AbeBooks', I’d write the following html:
<a href="http://www.abebooks.com/">used books from AbeBooks</a>
c. You’ll want to create a variety of inbound links using different variations of linking text.
There are simple steps you can take to start getting keyword rich links.
Easy ways to get keyword rich inbound links
- The easiest is of course from other websites that you control. You can interlink your sites if they are relevant, but don’t overdo it – stick to one or two links per site, not hundreds.
- Another easy way is to ask friends and colleagues who control other websites. But the same rules apply – don’t overdo it.
- Buy quality directory links. Do check that the links pass on link power as Google has all but 'disallowed' directory links.
- Tell people how you’d like them to link to you. Write the html, make it available and ask people to copy and paste the code into their own web pages.
- Write newsworthy press releases and use services such as www.prweb.com to distribute them. For a small additional fee they will allow you to embed links into the body of your press release. These in themselves are unlikely to pass on link power but people who read the press releases and then cover the story may do.
More difficult ways to get keyword rich inbound links
- Build contacts and relationships within your industry. Be generous in linking to useful external resources and you’ll find that the people you link to take notice: your generosity will often be rewarded with links back to your own site. If you’ve built a good relationship, people will be glad to use the linking text you suggest.
- Write and publish quality articles and blog posts on your own site. If people like your articles they’ll generally use the article’s title when they link to you, so make sure that you include important keywords in the titles of each article or post.
- Quality news and information sites in your industry will often accept well written articles for publication. When they do, they’ll normally publish a signature box describing what you do and linking to your site in whatever way you specify. If you write well and deliver on your promises, editors will mark you down as reliable and you’ll have little problem getting your articles published in the future.
- Look at people who are already linking to you (use a tool like Yahoo Site Explorer). They’ve already shown their interest in you, so you have a good chance of getting them to link to specific content using keywords of your choice.
- Incorporate keywords into your publication or product names. For example, Wordtracker’s ‘Keyword Research Guide’ contains ‘keyword research’.
We’ve suggested you start building keyword rich inbound links with 5-10 keywords, but once you’ve achieved some success you’ll want to expand on this. Furthermore, you’ll want to get creative in thinking of new ways you can get such links.
Have a quick scan of the ten methods once again and notice how many of them depend on having good relationships within your industry. That really is the secret of success.
For more articles on link building, see our article about Eric Ward, Father Of Link Building, Mark Nunney's How To Count Your Site's Inbound Links and our very own Ken McGaffin's on How To Get Links Without Asking.
About Rachelle Money
Rachelle Money is a freelance journalist based in Scotland, UK. She graduated from the Scottish School of Journalism in 2005 where she was awarded an internship with two national publications - The Sunday Herald newspaper and The Big Issue magazine. Rachelle has been working with Wordtracker since August 2007 and is a regular contributor to the newsletter.
28 comments
Good information, thank you. However, we're hearing a lot from Google regarding link buying and selling (possibly getting penalized for doing so) yet you mention buying links. Is there a right way or wrong way for buying and seelling links?
The best way to get links is to provide amazing content that people will want to link to - even without you asking them to! As for buying links - buying links is perfectly acceptable as a method of advertising your website and generating traffic. However buying links is NOT acceptable (in Google world) to manipulate your page rank. Thusly when you buy a link for advertising, you'll have no problem with a "nofollow" tag attached.
I have the same questions as DKE. I hope for your answer. Anyway nice and very useful tips you got there Rachelle. Thanks.
You are so right about providing the keyword enriched links to other sites. I do it when I ask for links for both my own website and for my customers. As a webmaster and designer, I am really pleased when someone else has written the code for me so that I can simply cut and paste.
I am cautious, however, and I do check out the link myself, as very occasionally someone will claim to be something they are not. But for me that has been the exception rather than the rule.
All these link building tips are very good, but recently I have been getting companies to handle it for me. I just find it too time consuming, eventually I hope to out source every aspect of my marketing, but I do like to know how its done before passing it on.
Once I've first built the relationship with a potential link partner, I generally find it to be no problem getting them them to use the anchor text I suggest. They're happy to do so since they recieve the same benefit from me.
DKE, MoneyMakingCashTacticsForGrab: a bit of bad editing there - now corrected: plenty of SEOs are still open about buying links but I don't recommend it. And the wisdom of submitting to even quality directories could be debated.
Great link building tips.
Another method of building links quickly is to give away templates, themes, designs, or website scripts with links in the footer. Many people design blog themes and give them away. Using this method spreads your links exponentially as more people see your designs.
I know a guy who has a page rank 7 site solely by giving away a directory script with links in the footer to his site.
Excellent piece of info!
Thanks for writing this down. Good link building is a tough business, as most of us who are reading this piece probably know.
Every bit of information helps, thanks I'm starting on my new contact list now.
great information this will really help. Thanks
You have a great information. Thanks a lot, because the keyword is very importan to bisnis
Great Article, Lots to think about!
What about title texts? I thought it was important for accessibility, indexing and general readability (all of which are important in SEO) to add title texts on all links (both on-site and outgoing)? Surely the full link should be something like: used books from AbeBooks
I agree with the "Write and publish quality articles and blog posts on your own site." It's all about the passion... Thanks for the great tips!
You did not get into web 2.0 or social book marking. I think using a blog and getting some SEO pugins and using the social networking stuff will greatly enhance your link building.
Yes , I still think that creating your own blog and posting every day is one of the best ways to create good inbound limks . One good post a day works well . RT
Excellent article. I agree that the quality of the links far outweigh the quantity of links. Having the appropriate words linked back to a site from a quality and relevant site is the true source of powering an online presence. Good things come to people who do good things. Keep a site relevant, real, and current for your keywords will always bring you the links you need.
Variety of anchor links is very important and can sometimes be overlooked if you are actively trying to get a top spot for one or two particular high value keywords.
With regards to Directory links, it is quite an onerous task to decipher which ones are good quality and which ones are junk, since there are so many poor directories that pass no value at all to the sites they are linking to.
The more I learn about getting quality links back to a site , the more difficult it seems. At first I went with article marketing, forum marketing, and blog comments, but then found out about that forum sigs and blog comments often are do not follow. Then I tried wiki's, blogs, and social networks, but I question the value of these links. Just creating great content has its merits but you still really need to promote your sites alot. I have yet to try press releases, but from what I have learned so far they seem to be one of the better ways to get alot of links back to your site. Thanks for your tips, look forward to seeing more.
Rachelle, all good comments and valid. They all help but there is nothing quite as quick at developing good back links as providing a viral type pdf to the masses or a useful (stressing the useful) program which you can spread over 1,000s of download sites.
Unfortunately all of these have become the target of the spammers. Those unfortunates who use automated tools with little to no understanding of how it should be used.
All good methods get screwed up by the tools who abuse any good method in an attempt to short-cut the system. Sometimes they have short term success until the next Google Slap.
Keep up the good work.
Isn't blog commenting also an easy way to gain backlinks? but webmaster usually don't accept those that use their keyword as their name when commenting.
This is a helpful post I think one way you have not discussed is writing an article and getting it posted on another person in your areas blog.
Great article. Thank you.
This information will be helping me to have some ideas creating keywords inbound links.
Thanks
Great site and good info. Article marketing is definitely a good way to get links.
Great info, I am going to reoptimize several areas of my website.
thanks.