links to your site

Selecting the best pages to link to

Pick one or two pages on your website for long term targeting with Inbound Links.

It is called PageRank and not WebsiteRank because Google gives a rank to every page, not to every website. Yes, there is a connection between pages on a website, but there are many examples of widely varying PageRanks within pages on the very same website. This is important because when you create Inbound Links, targeting the highest value web pages will decrease the bounce rate (bounce rate means the % of visitors that follow a link to your website and leave after viewing the page they arrived at) be sure to target one or two specific pages for which you want to increase the Inbound Links count to.

For example: Your website has 12 pages, but two of them in particular are where you want to drive traffic to; the Products page and the Services page. You might also consider the homepage itself, but whichever pages you select for SEO targeting, make sure they are the best candidates for eventual arrival of visitors when they click a link somewhere on the web and come to your website.

When selecting pages on your website for SEO targeting: (i.e., the pages of your website that you want visitors to arrive on from other websites)

1. Keep it to one or two pages (e.g. "http://www.justcauseit.com/channels/education" and "http://www.justcauseit.com/channels/arts")
2. If in doubt, use your homepage (e.g. http://www.justcauseit.com)
3. Expect the target pages to exist long into the future. Don't pick pages you know will be gone from your website soon, so that when people do click the link to your site, make sure they land on a good page.
4. If you MUST take a linked-to page off your website, replace it with a re-direct page that redirects the visitor to your homepage (and not to the standard "Error 404" message which will send them away).

If you want to find out how many links there are to a specific page, go to Google and type links: justcauseit.com/channels/arts

Finding Inbound Link opportunities

Central to making quality Inbound Links is your knowledge of your own business. You take a nugget of wisdom relating to your business and offer it to the world via a location on the web, and link that contribution back to your web page.

What's the most important aspect of where a link is coming from? It's location, location, location of course, so a link from www.ibm.com is worth a lot more than a link from mcSchmuckLumber.com. Here are the things you want to consider when finding opportunities for, and creating an Inbound Links from, external websites:

1. High traffic sites
2. Pages with higher PageRanks than yours.
3. Locations relevant to your business (if you are in the clothing business, a link from a lumber site is of less value, unless it is about, for example, clothing for lumber workers, which might be an excellent inbound link.)
4. Instead of listing your raw URL (e.g. http://www.ici.ie), use "Anchor" text (International Coaching Institute) with the link behind it.

It's all about giving value to the reader of your posting. Value, value, value.

The key is Value. Give valuable information to a forum, blog, bulletin board or other active community dealing in your subject and you have earned the right to add the link back to your site. The link rewards you in two ways (1) it increases your raw inbound link count determined by search engines and (2) it offers visitors the chance to click the link and come to your site. That second reward is more effecive when they like what they read in the posting you made, and they see a direct connection to the subject when they come to your site.