Utilizing your inbound links
Pagerank - where do I begin?
When considering how offpage characteristics effect
your sites ability to rank well for given keyword terms It cannot
be stressed enough that "Page rank is Page to Page, (NOT SITE
TO SITE) and independent of URL designation". What this means
is that once your site enters into the PR system ie: indexed by
Google by virtue of backlinks from and external source domain, then
a link from an internal page with "X" amount of PR contributes
exactly the same PR weight as a page from a different URL with "X"
amount of PR weight to distribute (all other factors being equal).
Getting my link popularity started - what does it take?
In order for pagerank to be calculated by Google's
algorithm for any page on your site that page must first have been
found by the Google spider (robot) through a backlink.
"Backlink: a link from one
unique URL designation to another - alternatively: a link from
one page to another."
Once you have recieved a backlink from a page that
has been indexed by the Google spider you are eligible to compete
for PR.
A link counts twice
There are 2 ways you can benefit from backlinks:
First you get a certain amount of PR weight points
as dictated by the google PR calculation algorithm (see the article
on the Google
pagerank page).
Second, and some argue more importantly, you also
get an added ranking boost for whatever keywords are contained within
the anchor text href="yourdomain.com">Anchor</a>
and this precisely describes why sites almost always rank #1 for
their domain name.
It is a common misconception that there is special
weight given to domain names when in fact the reason a site generally
ranks well for its domain name is because all of the links pointing
to that domain place your domain name in the anchor text. ie: href="yourdomain.com">yourdomain.com</a>
This is a great opportunity to utilize this little
know anchor text boost to place well for your chosen keywords. The
way to take advantage of this added boost is to request that your
keywords are placed in your backlink anchor instead of your domain
name.
Here is how to properly utilize a link acceptance
When a request for a link from another webmasters
has been accepted send a thank you letter and include your specific
HTML code so that you not only save them effort but you get a backlink
that reflects your keywords and not your domain.
Your thank you letter should look like this:
Dear webmaster,
Thank you for your gratious willingness to provie
a text link to my site. For you convenience I have written out
the source code that best reflects the page you are linking to
please cut and paste this exact code into your source to reflect
the most appropriate link:
<a href="http://www.mydomain.com" title="keyword">Keyword</a>
I thank you again for your linking to my site
and will gladly link back to your site with any specific html
that you provide.
Warmest regards,
Grateful Webmaster
In short, backlinks are a great asset if utilized
correctly and remember that the same principals apply to internal
links as apply to the links you recieve from other domains and other
webmasters. If your index page is optimized for keyword "a"
then make sure that all of your internal pages that link back to
the homepage use "a" as the anchor text DO NOT USE "home"
for a link back to your index page or you waste the most controllable
opportunity to boost your own keyword search engine positions.
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