SEO Basics - Good Link, Bad Link

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Your link profile is potentially the most powerful aspect of your SEO efforts, especially in the eyes of Google. Quality counts over quantity, but it is important to get a good list of well-balanced links pointing to your site. Diversification really is the key. Try not to concentrate all of your efforts on gaining links from one source, and similarly try not to gain them using a single method. A number of tactics should be avoided wherever possible because they either offer you no benefit whatsoever or your page may be penalized.

This article looks at the acquisition of links purely from an SEO standpoint and, aside from the really bad linking methods, if a link will provide good-quality, direct traffic then it is definitely still a good link and well worth considering. You will have to use your judgment on this, to a certain extent.

Good Links

Directory Links: Directories are viewed as being a very positive source of links by a number of search engines. Obviously, some directory listings carry much more weight than others and some directories are hardly worth the effort. Be careful to drip feed your site with directory links at first because it is possible that too many too quickly will see your site penalized until your link profile becomes more natural.

Start with the major Internet directories and consider getting links from free general topic directories as well as niche directories and also look at paying for inclusion in one or two of the seriously large directories like the Yahoo directory and business.com. As your link profile expands you can add more directories to gain extra weight.

Reciprocal Links: You may have read that reciprocal linking is dead. While it is true that Google and possibly other search engines now place much less weight on a profile that is crammed with nothing but reciprocal links they still have a place. Keep the number of reciprocal links you use down to a minimum and certainly don't base your entire link building efforts on this one tactic alone.

Again, balance is a big part of reciprocal linking but also of importance is relevance. Regardless of whether you offer a separate links or resources page, or you choose to include the links throughout your site you are still essentially endorsing the site. You will also gain much more credence from a link that is placed on a page containing information relevant to your own page.

Unique One-Way Inbound Links: These should pretty much be the staple diet of your link portfolio. An inbound link that is one way does not necessitate the inclusion of a link back to that page on your site. This can help to give your own pages the benefit instead of handing it out to your link partners. The more relevant and the more important that search engines deem the linking site to be the more weight they give that particular link.

Site Wide Links: Again, these should be used sparingly. Gaining a site wide link means that a link to your site or your pages is placed on a number of pages in a site. Search engines are known to give less weight to links that are procured on this basis but it does help to give your portfolio a more rounded appearance.

Press Release Links: Writing and submitting a digital press release can provide good links. Many press releases are used by other sites and industries related to your site and they may also be included on some major news websites. There are free press release distribution services available, but it is common to need t pay to make the link clickable and to use anchor text.

Article Links: Writing and submitting articles to article directories can provide a large number of links. Not only can you submit one article to numerous directories but each directory has the potential of generating a number of interested websites. These websites also publish your article (which includes an author bio section with your link). This can be a good way to get authoritative sites to link to you.

Community Links: Join forums and include your link in your signature. Post useful comments on other people's blogs and include your link as your username. You should, under no circumstances, spam blogs or forums and only include links on the sites that allow it.

Presell Advertising Pages: Some websites will allow you to include an entire page on their site. In most cases you will either need to pay to have the page written or you, or write the page yourself. Generally the website will also include other forms of advertising but as long as you choose sites carefully this can generate some excellent links.

Bad Links

FFA Sites: An FFA, or Free-For-All page, is one that allows anybody to post any link they like on the page. Typically they are not only useless to your cause, because the search engines ignore them, but they will not generate any natural traffic but may attract the spammers to your doors.

Link Farms: A link farm is a page that contains an excessively large number of links. Some say a page with 100 links directed out of that page is a link farm, but in all honesty it is unlikely that a page will yield much benefit for SEO or non-SEO with more than fifty or so links.

Off Topic: Off topic links are something of a bone of contention. They may offer very slight weight with some search engines because it is quite possible that natural links from certain websites would point to any number of pages on any topic. This appears in the bad link section because they offer very little positive benefit and your efforts would be best placed gaining on-topic links.

Unindexable: Purely from an SEO standpoint, links that cannot be indexed by search engines are completely useless. A search engine spider must be able to follow the link to find your page and provide you with any benefit for that link. Avoid any page that offers to display your link in a frame, or includes the noindex or nofollow robots.txt tags. However, bear in mind that a site that is currently not being indexed by search engines may be a new site. It could also grow up to be the next Google.com and take your link with it.

Conclusion:
Your link profile should appear as natural as possible so vary the good links as much as possible and avoid the bad links. Collect links from as many sources using as many tactics as possible and use keyword variants in your anchor text. By following these guidelines you should be able to improve the appearance of your link profile and, therefore, improve your search engine rankings.

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About the Author: WebWiseWords is a web content writer and is also establishing theseoglossary.com to help those that want to conduct their own SEO. The site includes definitions, articles, resources, and tools as well as SEO tutorials.

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We are often asked, and frequently see the question come up in various discussion groups, Which is the best tool for closing more sales and connecting with the right people online? Is it blogging, interacting with millions of bloggers sharing their business knowledge, industry commentary, and occasional pictures of their cat? Or one of the many business networks, such as openBC or Ecademy, which offer group interaction and private messaging as well as searchable profiles? Or LinkedIn, the trusted referral system that has attracted some five million professionals?

Asking which of these is "better" is like asking which is better: a hammer, a wrench, or a screwdriver? They are all tools, and best suited to particular tasks. A wrench can be used as a hammer in a pinch, and a hammer can force a screw into a two-by-four, but it's a lot harder and riskier. A master craftsman has a full toolbox, and unless your job is to drive nails all day, you'll be far more effective if you know the right tool to use for the task at hand.

Blogging is a way of building visibility, demonstrating your expertise, and engaging with people interested in the same topics as you. One of its greatest advantages is that it is completely open -- no membership required! Anyone on the Web can potentially find you in a search engine or a link from another blog, learn more about you, and contact you if you share some common interests or they want to learn more about your products or services. On the downside, while blogs are searchable by topic, it's very difficult to search for people in a structured way, e.g., former co-workers at a particular company, people in a certain industry in a certain city, or even people with a particular skill set.

Online communities offer a group interaction space (or multiple spaces) in conjunction with searchable, customizable personal profiles. They represent a convergence of identity (think personal Web pages), community (membership in self-organizing groups), and communication (discussion forums and private messaging). They offering varying degrees of open interaction, depending on the site and the preferences of the user, but only minimal interaction with non-members. The ability to easily learn more about a person and connect with them individually to follow up on the group interaction is compelling. One of the downsides is that they can be a little too enjoyable, and many people find themselves spending too much time in these sites when they should be focused on other aspects of their business. We are firm believers in closing more deals, not just in chatting with more people.

LinkedIn was primarily designed as a tool to help you leverage your existing network to meet specific people for a specific purpose. People are using it for more general-purpose networking, but communicating with specific people is the task for which it is optimized. There is no group interaction per se. LinkedIn also offers minimal ability to communicate within the platform, and the system encourages people to connect for a specific purpose, not just randomly or out of curiosity. These are major reasons why the site has created an attractive platform for senior executives, hiring managers, entrepreneurs, and other extremely busy people. They can leverage and be of service to their existing contacts with a minimal time investment and not a lot of unfocused interaction.

In our book, The Virtual Handshake, we introduce the Seven Keys to a Powerful Network, a framework for assessing your personal network and aligning your activities with your objectives. Comparing these tools in terms of the Seven Keys shows how each can serve your relationship-building activities in its own way:

Key	Blogging	LinkedIn	Online Networks
Character	Demonstrated over time through how you speak of others, what you write about ethical issues, etc.	Demonstrated by some endorsements.	Demonstrated strongly by your public interaction with others, your willingness to be of service, etc.
Competence	Demonstrated through in-depth writing about your topics of expertise.	Demonstrated minimally by endorsements, though multiple endorsements add up.	Demonstrated through writing about your topics of expertise, often in response to specific questions.
Relevance	Attract and connect with people interested in the same topics as you.	Ability to focus tightly on meeting people for specific purposes, and hopefully attract like-minded people.	Ability to focus on meeting people for specific purposes and to connect with like-minded individuals in a group setting.
Strength	Strengthen relationships through sustained dialog with readers and other bloggers on your topic.	Strengthen relationships by being of service, making referrals and endorsements.	Strengthen relationships through sustained public and private dialog with other members.
Information	Great source of information about someone's expertise and interest. Minimal information about relationships, contact info, etc.	Great source of information about your immediate contacts. Unique source of information about the relationships in your second and third degree.	Great source of information about your immediate contacts, though profiles are often fairly static compared to blogs. Information about relationships varies greatly by site and personal practices.
Number	Tremendous tool for building the number of people you know - probably the best (short of major media coverage).	Can be used to build large networks, but not optimized for it, as each connection requires manual intervention, and there is no way to engage people within the system.	Group interacting supports connecting with a large number of people, though the potential pool is limited to members of the site.
Diversity	Not really a tool for building diversity, except that you will often attract readers who have the opposite view on your topic as you, e.g., conservative and liberal political bloggers read each others' blogs and comment on them.	Excellent tool for purposefully finding diverse contacts, e.g., experts in a field you're considering moving into, a country you're planning to visit, etc.	Build diversity through group interaction. For example, a group focused on a particular business interest will likely include people of different political and religious affiliations.

So it's impossible to say that one or the other is best overall, and difficult to say that any one is best even for one person. Really, each is best suited for certain tasks. Because most people's business needs are many and diverse, and we're never certain what those needs may be in the future, the master salesperson, like the master carpenter, keeps a full toolbox and knows both which tool to use for the job and how to use it most effectively.

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1. One-word sentences? Eliminate. No way! I’ve found that when used with discretion, one-word sentences and even one-word paragraphs in sales copy add emphasis and make the page look more inviting.

2. Who needs rhetorical questions? I do – that’s who! Rhetorical questions are a great way to stop prospects in his or her tracks and get them thinking. My rhetorical headline, “What’s Wrong with Getting Richer Quicker?” Mailed for years.

3. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used. Baloney! Contractions should always be used – unless NOT using them adds appropriate emphasis: “Don’t buy any stock today” is much less emphatic than “Do NOT buy any stock today”.

4. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. Not necessarily true. Remember: Our aim is to write colloquially – and most of our prospects break this rule with wild abandon.

5. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. WRONG! Conjunctions are connecting words … when used at the beginning of a paragraph, they can be very helpful in promoting readership.

6. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. Again – if you’re speaking to your prospect colloquially, it may sometimes be helpful to.

7. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.) That’s as dumb as a bag of hammers. Cliches, metaphors and other figures of speech are more than just colloquial and comfortable; they tend to paint vivid mental images. And as we both know, a picture is worth a thousand words.

8. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration. Some of the most effective headlines ever written used alliteration to make them memorable. Bencivenga’s legendary “Lies, Lies, Lies” “12 Smiling Swindlers” etc.

9. Comparisons are as bad as cliches. Who wrote these rules anyway? Comparisons are essential in sales copy. To make my case, I often compare something that’s happening in the economy or stock market today with something that happened in years past.

And to simplify things, I often compare something that happens inside your body with something that happens outside it: “This supplement is like a rotor-rooter for your arteries.”

And of course, comparing the high value of the benefits my product delivers with its low cost is a proven winner.

10. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. Again – analogies are word pictures … they’re used in colloquial conversation … and they’re a quick way to drive your point home.

11. Kill all exclamation points! Not always! Judicious use of exclamation points in copy is helpful to emphasize important points! Overuse can kill, though!

12. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." You can quote me on this: Waldo was a drooling moron. Quoting a top expert’s implicit or explicit endorsement of your rationale, theme or product is a powerful way to establish credibility.

13. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it effectively. Hyperbole is like art: No one can define it, but everyone thinks they know it when they see it. As the writer, you alone should judge whether your tone and word choices are appropriate or hype.

14. Puns are for children, not for groan readers. Tell that to Arthur Johnson: He knows that light humor – including puns – can be a powerful readership and response booster, especially in heads and subheads!

15. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms. Nonsense. Colloquialisms communicate. See above.

16. Profanity is for asses. Bullshit!

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