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Do You Know The Power Of A Link?

January 13, 2009 by Katerina Gasset  
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The power of linking is underestimated by most bloggers. Google puts a lot of importance on links that are coming into your blog and those that connect one post to another post on your blog. The latter is called internal linking.

You don’t want to have a lot of outbound links. If you get too many outbound links the search engines will view you as a resource site and not a content rich site which determines where in the search you will end up.

jailDO NOT buy into link farms. These can be very dangerous and have you thrown into the ‘google sandbox’.

There is a lot that you can learn about SEO but the 2 most important things are writing good content with proper keywords and inbound and internal linking.

I advise that in every 2 paragraphs ideally you should have one link pointing to another page or to somewhere else on that same page.

Most of us do not fully utilize and optimize our blogs with internal linking strategies. Here are some ways in which you can more fully use internal linking in your blog posts.

In case you do not know how to add a link to your post, it is very easy to do:

Use Anchor text for all your links. This is one of the most important and easy SEO things you can do with your blog and website. Your anchor text should be keyword rich. Use the keywords you want to be found for in your anchor text.

What is anchor text? When you type in your post, ‘Click here to search all Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale ‘ that is anchor text.

Now I would click on the link image on the toolbar and add my URL into the link box, ‘http://www.Wellington-luxury-homes.com.

Then when someone clicks on the text that I wrote like the above text, Click here to search all Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale it will go to my website. When you add the link, the anchor text will be in blue font color. That tells people that if they click on the words they will be going to where you linked those words to go to.

chainlinkDo not use the name of your website and write your whole web address in your post because then you are not fully optimizing using your keywords. I see a lot of posts where the whole address is right in the post and the URL is not keyword rich. Like for instance: http://www.anyrealtyinnowheretown.com. Those words should go in your link box but not in the post itself.

Use keywords in the text part.

Also when you are using links internally make sure you do not use shortcuts to certain pages within your site. Type out the entire URL within your page you want your visitor to go to. If you are sending them to another post use the URL of that post, don’t send them to just your profile page unless that is where you want them to go.

  • For each post concentrate on only a few longtail keywords per post. Don’t try to go and rank for every keyword in one post. Target those specific keywords and learn how to use them effectively throughout your posts.
  • When you are using internal linking add it throughout the body of your post rather than just listing all the links in a row. So in each paragraph add words that are a part of what you are writing about and turn those words into links. Linking within your page adds more relevance  and internal value to your link.
  • You can go back to some of your older posts and add internal links to some of your newer pages of relevance. This way you add some valuable link juice and give it some rank boost.

If you would like to learn more about SEO and how to implement these strategies you can click here to read about my SEO To The Top Webinar.

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Viewing 5 Comments

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    thanks Katerina

    Enjoyed your article. Good to be reminded that doing the simple stuff is important and necessary for SEO

    Simon
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    Helpful and simple information. You are reminding us that we are blogging so that we rank and in turn generate business. thank you
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    • v
    I think that the question here would be "do you know the power of a link?" By adding the "Click here to search all" at the beginning of your example link, you actually degraded the seo value of that link to your page. You would have been better off to say something like "visit our (link)Wellington Luxury Homes for Sale(/link) page to find your perfect home", which would have then given you the full seo benefit of the link.

    If you want to teach people how to market and seo their websites I think that is great, but you first have to learn yourself. The information above is less than basic (most of which is inaccurate and no longer being practiced by top tier seo's) , your websites themselves are not seo'd properly and only rank for the very basic of terms.

    Your domain for the linked to website has been online since January of last year and in more than a year you have only managed to build around 1200 links according to yahoo, I am sure it is less in Google, and the majority of those links come from ActiveRain, which themselves have been devalued because you link to your active rain profile from the homepage of your site, so in essence you have created a big ol' link exchange, which as you should know Google doesn't like.

    If that were not enough, you have now created a website offering your seo webinar and from that site your claim to fame is getting someone to rank for "green bay wisconsin howard" which according to google does not even have enough searches per month for them to calculate the data, meaning that ranking is worthless.

    The other example on your seo site is a ranking for "Charlotte NC Carmel Park" again according to Google not enough data to report. Now take a search term like "charlotte homes" that produces over twenty thousand searches a month and your client is nowhere to be found? My project would have been to rank them for that, but it seems that your inexperience fell short.

    Part of being an seo is helping your client determine what search terms will benefit them and then getting them to rank for those terms. You have not done that. The problem we face in this industry these days is that there are so many untrained people spreading bad advice to people that want to learn.
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    First of all, who are you to judge another? You are entitled to your own opinion as am I. What I do know is that our phone rings from our website and from our Active Rain blog. The proof is in the pudding and we have lots of listings and closings to prove my system works. You see, I don't want nor do any of the agents I coach want to get 100's of leads for short tail search terms; that they have to spend time weeding through to find the few good ones. Not the highest and best use of our time.

    But we do want the sellers who want to list their homes and call us based on their longtail search terms. And that is precisely what we get. The examples from the agents with the so called waste of time keywords have obtained listings because of those terms and others. We are not even emailed from the prospects, we garner phone calls! People who are ready to list and have decided to do biz with us and not call any other agents.

    Most of the agents that I coach want listings not buyers. My site is not optimized for buyers or buyer leads. We have a very successful short sale listing inventory of which 90% of it has been from phone calls from sellers who have found us on the internet through our blog and/or our website. So I really don't care if you like or don't like what I teach because my Webinar is a HUGE success with many testimonials of putting into practice what I teach that equates into listings and closed business. People know I care about them and that speaks volumes about my service.

    Next, I was giving an example of anchor text. Nothing in that sentence says that those were the best choice of words- it was merely an example. And here in our neck of the woods, people are not all internet savvy and they need to be told to click on a link in order to know it is a clickable link. It is a waste of a keyword according to webmasters but not a waste of a keyword to the end user.

    I am extremely glad that I have the self confidence and success enough to not allow you to cause me to doubt myself or my abilities. I only hope that no one with a fragile self esteem ever crosses your path.

    Katerina
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    >>First of all, who are you to judge another?
    I have been running websites for the last ten years, I currently own and operate over 120 different websites, five of those are top 10k Alexa sites. I have taught search engine optimization to over 2600 agents and provided consulting services to some of the biggest webmasters across the world. I regularly run internet marketing workshops here in the U.S. and overseas in the U.K.

    >>I don't want nor do any of the agents I coach want to get 100's of leads for short tail search terms
    This is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard in all of my years doing this. I have never met an agent that did not want 100's of leads, those leads are what keep them in business and are often the sole reason an agent decides to start a website. My previous suggestion of shortening the targeted term to "charlotte homes" from "Charlotte NC Carmel Park" would still be bringing highly targeted traffic to the agents website, it would be bringing potential buyers and sellers in the Charlotte area, which is what the agent wants in this scenario.

    >>But we do want the sellers who want to list their homes and call us
    Your longtail search terms have no traffic, so I can't help but wonder who you will be waiting for to call? I agree that you should target clients that would be interested in your area, however, there are ways to do this and still bring in a considerable amount of those targeted visitors. I guarantee that by increasing the number os prospects you will increase the number of client conversions.

    >>agents with the so called waste of time keywords have obtained listings because of those terms
    Possibly so, but wouldn't those same agents rather increase that number by 60 percent? I have yet to meet an agent that turned down a potential client because they already had one this month and if your agents are doing business this way, they won't be in business for very long.

    >>because my Webinar is a HUGE success
    Which is quite unfortunate for the agents who are spending their hard earned money for lessons from someone who has been unable to produce any significant results from her own website. By telling me that you have great testimonials from people that wouldn't know the difference between good seo and bad, means very little. The simple fact of the matter is that I can tell by looking at your own online projects you know very little about optimizing a website, yet you continue to take money from others whom you have led to believe otherwise.

    >>Nothing in that sentence says that those were the best choice of words
    So you agree that your link strategy was not the most effective method, yet it was what you chose to teach others visiting this website. Why would you openly offer an ineffective method for people who have come here to learn? Not only are you providing bad information, but you are doing it knowingly and you admit to it? Do you save the really helpful information for your paid students?

    >>people are not all internet savvy and they need to be told to click on a link
    I have built top ranking websites across every niche from real estate to knitting to seo and I have never had a problem with someone figuring out that they are supposed to click a link. I would guarantee that anyone coming across the link example I made in my previous comment they would not only know to click on it, they would also know where it was going to take them. I understand that not everyone is Internet savvy, but they are not dumb either.

    >>I have the self confidence and success enough to not allow you to cause me to doubt myself or my abilities
    And I applaud you for this. I had nor have any intention of making you doubt yourself or your abilities as either an agent or a webmaster. My only intention with my last comment was to share my concern of what you are offering. I have friends and family in the real estate industry, I would feel horrible if they were to spend their money on a service that in all fairness would not leave them any better off than they were in the first place.

    I don't even wish to push you away from teaching seo as you have been, I do however hope that you will reconsider your current strategy and make changes as necessary, not only to further your business, but also to provide more value to the students whom you teach. If these agents walk away from your webinar with a better ranking for these very longtail search terms, that is great, if for nothing more than it has probably boosted their confidence in online marketing, but what if they walked away that same confidence and a ranking that would bring them thousands of targeted prospects, would that not be more beneficial for them and you?

    I have never target a search term with more than three words, why, because the traffic just isn't there to make it worth while. If I am going to do something, why not do it great rather than just doing it okay. Do you know who the top producers in most firms are? They are most often the ones with the strong rankings for competitive search terms, why, simply because they get more exposure than other agents. They get more website traffic, they get more prospects, they get more calls and emails and if they are good, they are able to convert more of those prospects into clients.

    In all honesty I have nothing against you or your business, but I do have a passion for providing people with the truth that they need to build a strong, successful business that will provide for their families for many years to come.
 
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