Jay's Phoenix Area Real Estate (and more...)

Links. If you have a web site, you've probably heard about how important they are. There are reciprocal links, one-way links, internal links, in-line links. There are hyperlinks, hidden links, link targets, good links, bad links, link farms and many more (including the world famous Jeff Link).

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What is one to do? How do you sort out all these links? How do you do "good linkage"?

In a nutshell, a link (or hyperlink ) is something you click on a web page to take you somewhere else on the Internet. It can be a link to a completely different web site (an external link), a link to a different page on your own site, or even a link to a different place on the same page (internal links).

"Reciprocal links" are an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) term that get a lot of press, some good, some bad. A reciprocal link is simply when you link to someones web site, and they in turn link back to yours. Generally speaking, reciprocal links help you rank higher in search engines. BUT, there are many experts that now feel the search engines are devaluing reciprocal links. However, if you do them right reciprocal links probably don't hurt, and may indeed help. You need to make sure your are reciprocating with relevant sites (sites similar in information to yours). You shouldn't put too many "recips" on one page, and there should be some good "anchor text" with them (more on that later).

"One Way Links" are almost without question one of the best things you can have for good SEO. A One Way is just what it sounds like. It's when some site out there links to your web site (or pages in your web site to be more accurate) and you do not "reciprocate" or link back to them. The Goolge's out there think that if someone is linking to a page of yours, they must think it's important, so they will rank that page better than some other page without a one way link to it. One way links are not easy to get. You can ask, but people will rarely give you something if they get nothing in return. Having good, original, compelling content on a page helps. People will eventually find it and link to it. Writing articles and making them available for use is a great way to get one ways. (Have you ever read an article on some web site and noticed that the links in it point back to the authors web site? Those are one-way links.)

"Internal Links" are links in your web pages to other places in your own web site. They are often overlooked for SEO purposes, but they can be very helpful. They also help your visitors navigate your site more easily. To that tune, they also can help "Bots" (or "spiders") navigate your site more easily too. A Bot/Spider is a magical piece of software that search engines send to your site. They "crawl" around your site, following links and reporting that information back to the search engine. Those engines then digest all that info and help figure out where you should rank.

Doing Good Linkage: There are good links, OK links and bad links. For the sake of example, let's say I want to link to my blog site, http://www.PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com. A bad link is a link that leads to never-never land. It could be pointing to a page that no longer exists. It could (usually through a coding typo) point to a page that NEVER existed. Search engines do not like to find bad/dead links. You should check links on your web site frequently to make sure they work OK. An example of a bad link to my blog might be: http://www.PhoenixRaelEstateGuy.com (note the poor spelling of "real"). Clicking on that link sends you off to Internet never-never land. This is not good.

An Ok link might be something like: "To see my blog, click here." The link works, it takes you to my blog. But it's just OK, because it doesn't TELL you (or the Bots) anything about WHAT the link is for. 

A good link to my blog might look like this: For information on Phoenix real estate, try the Phoenix area real estate blog. It's a blog covering just about everything to do with Phoenix area real estate. See how the actual link is text that describes what the link is about? Notice the text both before and after the link also help describe what the link is for? This is called "anchor text". Notice that there are three instances of the keywords "Phoenix real estate" and two instances of the keyword "blog" in just two sentences. "Information" is also a good keyword. That would be "keyword rich anchor text" and the search engines eat this stuff up.

Another area often neglected are pages OTHER than the home page. People tend to focus on getting links to their home page. Granted, that is probably the most important page, but you shouldn't focus on it at the expense of other pages. Keyword rich anchor text on your own site's pages leading to other pages in your site are also VERY helpful in SEO. Getting reciprocal and one-way links to pages other than your home page will greatly increase the number of pages and search terms you get indexed in search engines. The more pages you have indexed, with different key words, the more you can take advantage of the Long Tail. (Not familiar with the Long Tail? You should be.. Read here for more on the Long Tail )

So go to your web sites and blogs and take a look at your link structure. Do the links all point to live pages? Do you have good anchor text? Writing good keyword rich anchor text is tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's a snap. And it will greatly improve your web site and/or blog's search engine results placement!!