By Robert Lockard

This is a follow-up to my previous blog entry, “How to improve your SEO through links.” I’m talking about what I learned at Webmarketing123’s August 5, 2009 Webinar, “Advanced SEO Webinar: Linking Best Practices.” Without further ado, I’ll return to where I left off.

Unless a website is cached or saved by search engines on a regular basis, the links found on it won’t count toward the search engine optimization of the sites it links to. That explains why Google can’t keep up with Twitter and other social-media sites, as I discussed in an earlier eHarbor Blog entry. It’s trying to take a snapshot of websites that change multiple times every second. Search engines will have to get creative to solve that problem in their methodology.

Returning to caches, I learned a cool trick at the Webinar that I would like to share. If you want to know if a Web page is cached by Google, all you have to do is type “cache:www.thesitename.com” into a Google search and it will tell you. Sites that are cached by Google can be useful in generating SEO because they are actually read by Google. You shouldn’t waste your time trying to get links on sites that offer no real SEO value. This is a good way to test them.

The big question is how do you get inbound links? After you’ve gone through and added great content that is relevant to your keywords, you can start using the following sources to get inbound links:

- Directories

- Paid Listings

- Article Syndications

- Blogs

- News Releases

By using a diversity of methods to obtain inbound links, you make your site look better to search engines. If you focus too much on any one source of links, search engines can dock you. Don’t add links too fast. That also looks bad to search engines. Spread your growth across a period of time instead of trying to do it all in one quick surge.

You should be aware that some sites are better than others, when it comes to getting links from them. Here are some criteria to keep in mind when selecting which sites to try to get inbound links from:

- Domain Authority – How long the website has existed.

- Rank – Where the website stands on Google, Bing and Yahoo searches for targeted keywords.

- Spam – How professional or “spammy” the site looks.

- Other Links – If the site contains links to other respectable sources in your industry.

- Similar Content – How the site’s content compares to your own. The closer the better.

That’s pretty much what I learned at this informative Webinar. I highly recommend you check out Webmarketing123’s free Webinars. And I also recommend you keep coming back to the Submit Solution SEO Blog for frequent updates on Internet marketing and ecommerce strategies.

This is a complete version of the post on the eHarbor Blog: “How to get inbound links.” The photo of the fingers touching light is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of littledan77.

By Robert Lockard

I enjoy Webmarketing123’s free Webinars on Internet marketing. I always learn a lot from them, and I try to apply what I learn. I’ve discussed several Webinars in the eHarbor Blog, most recently in my blog entry, “Experts are wrong: Twitter and Facebook help SEO.” In that post, I said I didn’t agree with one of their ideas about social media, but most of the time I appreciate their insights.

Today, I’ll talk about what I learned at their August 5, 2009 Webinar, “Advanced SEO Webinar: Linking Best Practices.”

The five things a website needs to get ranked on the first page of Google results are:

1. Keywords – These are the search terms you want people to type into a search engine in order to find your Web page.

2. Site Content – You need to use your chosen keywords in your website’s text to show search engines your site is relevant to those topics.

3. Meta Content – You don’t usually see this content, but it must be there in the backend of your site and in your Web page titles for your site to be fully optimized.

4. URLs – Include important keywords in your URLs. For instance, it is much better to have a URL like www.eharborinc.com/blog/2009/07/17/is-twitter-overhyped, which includes the date and headline keywords, than something like www.eharborinc.com/blog/post-81. The second URL gives no clue as to what it contains, while the first one gives a much better idea of the page’s subject matter.

5. Inbound Links – These are links (or votes) from other websites to your site. Search engines look at both the number and quality of the links you receive from other sites.

This Webinar focused on the importance of inbound links and how to improve their quality and impact on your search-engine rankings. After you have created an excellent site, with top-notch content on a well-defined subject, you can start working on getting links from relevant websites and forums.

Three important principles to remember in your links are:

1. Make sure the anchor text, or the text that is hyperlinked, describes the page it is linking to.

2. Provide supporting material near the anchor text to further describe what the linked page contains.

3. Be as specific as possible where you send links to. Avoid sending links to homepages unless you have a good reason for doing so.

This blog entry is getting long, so I think I’ll have to cut it short and finish it in a second part. Stay tuned to the Submit Solution SEO Blog for more updates on how to use search engines in your Internet marketing strategy.

This is a complete version of the blog entry on the eHarbor Blog: “I link, therefore I am… on top of Google.” The photo of the confusing keyboard arrows is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of jeremyfoo.