Optimized Link Building: It's A Popularity Contest

It seems lately all we hear about is networks. How good of reception does your mobile device get? How large is your network?

Today we are going to be talking about networks but not in the traditional sense. I am not referring to social networks, wireless carrier networks or sheer people to people networks. No, what I am talking about is your link network.

So first of all let’s take a look at why this should be a subject of interest. We all well know now that the bigger the network the better. But that is certainly contingent on the quality network as well. Every network really is only as strong as it’s weakest link.

With any website who is it that we are first trying to impress? The search engines, right? Of course. It is all a popularity contest. But this contest if more difficult than high school. This one has algorithms set in place to determine you real popularity. Math....determining popularity....what? While Google and others may be dealing with math we can simplify a bit and forget about that. Today, I want to teach you how to become popular online. First, we will cover how to create quality and optimized links. Second, I will talk to you about different ways to generate keyword optimized links from online authorites. And lastly, I am going to put you to work!

How to create optimized links?

First we have to understand the bare bones of how a link is created. This is where HTML will come into play. Keep in mind that when creating content in most places online today they will have a tool for you to create you own link. But for those who still do not we still want to be ahead of the game. Below is an example of the HTML for an “embedded link” (the embedded part of that phrase means that it is a link hidden within text. You don’t see the actual URL any where).



Now it is important to remember that your “phrase for optimization” as noted above will also be the phrase the link to your website is found in. For instance, if I were trying to optimize our site for the keyword phrase “Link Building” I would have a link that, in final, shows up like this:

Link Building

And if you actual did click on that you would find it takes you directly to the {ideal}this website.

Now we know that “how” of link creation and optimization. Let’s take a look at where you would want to be placing links like these and why.

If you remember, this is a internet marketing popularity contest. So there are a few things to remember when popularity is a factor. Rule #1 is the person who knows the biggest people in the biggest places is in! And links are the ways other websites will reflect whether or not they really “know” someone. So how do we know who are the biggest websites? And how do we get a link our their site to ours? Check out the following definitions for a little help:

Page Rank: a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.

Reciprocal Linking: A link offered to another site on the condition that you gain one in return. For example, you might provide a link to Site X on your links page provided Site X has a link back to you.

Essentially you are able to locate websites with higher page rank than yours, exchange links, and therefore raise your level of importance online in the eyes of various search engines. The page rank system is build on a scale from 0-10. The higher you number the better.

Next you are also able to create relevant content (such as an article or press release) that you may also place optimized links in as well. A very common and revered place for doing this is through eZineArticles.com



This is a great place to generate content that will be indexed as a web page itself, is relevant to your niche market or website, and provide yourself with a great link as well. Here is how you do it:

• First write an article of at least about 400-450 words in length minimum.
• Make sure the article is relevant and not advertising or too promotional.
• Create an account with eZine in order to submit your articles.
• When submitting your article (usually toward the end of the article) place your embedded and optimized link in the text.

This article directory currently holds a page rank of 6. This is a great rank and is likely higher than yours. It will be a great start.

This is not the only way to get links online that will optimize you for search engines. We will be talking more about other forms of creating quality content online with link optimization in future posts.