This tome started out as an article on link building co-authored by Robin Nobles, Eric Ward and John Alexander. Thanks to tips and more tips from dozens of contributors, it is now a 36-page no-cost "bible" on the subject of link popularity that deserves a spot on every marketer's desktop. Within you will find everything from a suggested template for your links page(s) to tips on how to create a site that others will want to link to. The document was published in 2002 but the strategies remain timely.
Visit this site for some of the most useful, practical, time-saving roadmaps to link popularity available anywhere. Author Ken McGaffin's philosophy is wonderful: "Create good content, link to great content and great content will link to you." The Linking Matters website is an experiment to prove that a strong linking strategy provides a major boost to search engine rankings -- and it works. By offering an excellent 30+ page report on linking strategy as well as a workbook to help you execute your campaign, the site's link popularity has skyrocketed since its February 2003 launch. To help you practice what they preach, you should also avail yourself of the plethora of articles and links at the site as well as the must-read biweekly email newsletter.
Just about every spider-based search engine uses link popularity as a
factor. So, how do you find out how much link popularity your site has? How do you know which sites are actually linking to you? This site offers a
hands-on way to find out the link popularity of your site in most of the
major search engines, including AltaVista, Excite, Google and many more.
While there, be sure to take in the promotion tips and the informative
search engine marketing tutorial.
This is a useful no-cost resource for building a linking hit list. Ranking.com calculates the ranking of the world's top 900,000 websites based upon proprietary research. You can search for any site (say that of your main competitor's) and see their monthly unique visits, total visitors, number of page views and links. Next, click on the "similar sites" link and you will receive a list of sites similar to that of your competitor's as categorized by Ranking.com. These sites represent linking opportunities that you might not have considered, and you can delve into your niche to your heart's content. You can also search for sites by category, but the categories are rather loosely organized so you won't generate the same pinpoint results. We're not sure how they are compiling their page views and traffic stats, as their results different quite substantially from our own site tracking; still we find the list of peer sites generated to be very interesting and useful.
Seems like one of the easiest ways to boost your link popularity quickly would be to buy incoming links, right? Indeed, the world has moved on, and link building is no longer a true popularity contest based on how good your site is. It's turned into a big business where you can buy and sell links 24/7. It's not necessarily a strategy experts recommend, as search engines are increasingly adept at judging the relevancy and purity of your incoming links, and there are many sharks in these waters. However, if you want to see how the business works, this site is typical of the genre. You can even sign up for a no-cost link notification service and you'll receive an email when links in your category become available for sale. A word to the wise -- beware of link brokers that will generate hundreds or thousands of form letters on your behalf requesting links. It's the search engine world's very own version of spam, and it's sure to work against you.
WebmasterWorld is what one could call a virtual hitching post where online marketers gather to share ideas, tips and techniques. There are forums on many topics, including link development. Among the hundreds of linking-related threaded conversations you'll find discussions on incentive-based link development, average link request conversion rates and the pros and cons of various link management tools.
Xenu's Link Sleuth is a handy little tool that checks websites for broken links. It verifies text links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. Xenu displays a continuously updated list of URLs that you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time. There is no limit to the number of websites or links that Xenu can handle, and unlike many similar tools, it is available at no cost.