Be honest, how much attention do you pay to interlinking on your website?  Do you put more emphasis on external linking?  As every SEO expert can tell you, search engines will give plenty of attention to your external linking efforts, but internal linking is just as important.  Internal linking is a content optimization tactic that not only helps your user navigate your site (if done correctly), but it also helps pass your page rank throughout your site.

Why is internal linking important?  Your site architecture actually has a direct impact on how your ranking power flows from page to page through your site.  With proper internal linking, you have some control over this and you can manipulate your page rank in the most beneficial way for your site.  Bad internal linking means poor navigation throughout your site and search engines will determine that your site is of poor quality because of this.  In addition, poor interlinking can confuse your website visitors.  To help you navigate the world of internal linking, here are 10 tips, in no particular order:

1. Make sure you have a link structure that provides easy access to every internal page you want to be visible to search engines.
2. Use anchor text that promotes the keywords you’re targeting on the page.
3. Find the most desirable hierarchy of your pages in order to manipulate the flow of page rank.  This is important because page rank is shared by the internal pages the main URL links to.  Therefore, it’s essential to set priorities and adjust your architecture accordingly.  For instance, you don’t want page rank split up amongst form thank you pages, but you would want page rank to flow to your product pages.
4. Include calls to action before, within or after your link.  People’s eyes naturally gravitate toward any links on your page, so it’s a great way to emphasize a call to action.
5. Link only between pages that are related by keyword.
6. Make sure that every page links to at least one other page.  This will help search engines crawl your site faster.
7. Avoid using JavaScript, Flash or other plug-ins with internal linking.  Plain HTML text is easier for search engines to crawl.
8. Don’t become a victim of excessive internal linking. It’s annoying to read a page with hundreds of links and search engines will get suspicious.  Tip: Try internally linking about every 100 words.
9. Don’t link to pages that aren’t useful.  While you might spot a great opportunity to slide another keyword into the content and link to another page on your site, you still need to provide value to your reader.  Ask yourself if it makes sense to lead the reader there.
10. Avoid nofollow links unless absolutely necessary.  These will block spiders, which defeats part of the reason why you’re internally linking to begin with.

With these tips in hand, your internal linking efforts can improve how search engine spiders crawl your site, build internal relevancy, help users navigate your site and effectively pass your page rank throughout your site in the most beneficial way.  Find out more ways to improve your search engine optimization efforts.

*Image provided by Larixk on Flickr

In spite of the attention that webmasters give to on-site factors, though, the single most effective tactic that you can use to increase your organic search traffic is still smart linkbuilding.  The formula is simple: the more relevant links you have pointing at your domain from other sites, the higher it will rank for your targeted keyword phrases.

If you’re new to off-site SEO, however, the prospect of linkbuilding can be more than a little intimidating.  With so many different options for pursuing links, what are the most effective?  Remember: it isn’t just the sheer number of links that helps your site rank higher for targeted keywords, but also the relevance of the pages that link back to you.

Here are the five methods for link building that I’ve found to be most effective in the years that I’ve spent in search engine optimization.  While they aren’t the only ways to build links back to your website or blog, they have worked best for me on a wide variety of different sites.  Remember: don’t just limit yourself to one linkbuilding strategy, and never stop digging deep for more places online to get good, relevant backlinks!

1.  Article Marketing

Article marketing is used frequently by countless webmasters to build relevant, do-follow links back to domains, but it’s rarely done effectively.  While publishing original articles on marketing sites does create relevant links back to your site, the articles themselves tend to carry very little search engine authority . . . which means that you have to publish a lot of articles in order to make much of a difference.

It also helps if the original articles that you publish are also well-written and helpful to the target audience, since that makes it more likely that they will be picked up and re-published on relevant blogs (creating even more links back to your site from different domains).

In order to have even limited success with article marketing, plan on publishing several articles a month (at least) and linking back to your site’s homepage and an internal page in the resource box.  The article marketing sites that I’ve used the most are Ezine Articles, GoArticles, Article Dashboard, SearchWarp and Articles Base.

2.  Guest Blog Posts

If done correctly, guest blog posts can be the single most powerful off-site SEO tool you have in your linkbuilding arsenal.  The problem is that effective guest blog posting is much more difficult to do than article marketing, link exchanges and directory submissions.  The links that you include back to your own site are generally much higher quality, though, so it’s worth the extra effort.

In order to get content accepted by an influential blogger for a guest post, it needs to be relevant, useful and well-written (unlike articles on article marketing sites).  Don’t be afraid to submit your guest posts to smaller, less popular blogs as well.  One valuable online community that helps you find other bloggers who are interested in guest posters is My Blog Guest.

3.  Relevant Link Exchanges

Notice that I included the word “Relevant” when mentioning link exchanges.  There are some people who say that link exchanges have been rendered ineffective for SEO purposes by the search engines, but this isn’t entirely true.  As long as you exchange links with sites that are relevant to your own–and don’t overdo it–you can still gain a lot of authority with link exchanges.

It’s best to build professional relationships with the webmasters of relevant sites before suggesting a link exchange.  Become active in your niche’s online community by leaving comments, submitting guest posts, interacting with other bloggers, and referring to your own site when it’s helpful to do so.  This will make webmasters much more likely to agree to a suggested link exchange.

4.  Running A Website Contest

Giving away prizes to your site’s regular visitors is a much more effective–and affordable–link building tactic than you might realize.  While giving away cash or prizes in exchange for links is a big no-no with the search engines, you can still effectively use contests to encourage your fans to interact with your site and mention it to their own readers.

Rather than offering a monthly prize to someone who links back to your site, why not make it an entry requirement to simply mention your site somewhere online?  Whether the contest entrants mention your site on their own blog, in their Facebook profiles, or in an online forum, they will still be building your brand recognition . . . and this will inevitably generate links in the long run.

Once you’ve started your own competition, be sure to advertise it on some of the many free online contest forums such as About Blog Contest, Contest Blogger and Lucky Contests (there are dozens of more places to post your contest, as well).  And don’t think that you have to offer up a super-expensive prize in order to get people to take part; even fun trinkets, books and t-shirts can generate user interaction.

5.  Authoritative Directory Submissions

Directory submissions have been a part of the standard SEO link-building package for years, and there are literally thousands of different directories online that will link back to your website for free.  The problem is that these directories have been severely de-valued by the search engines due to linkbuilding abuse.

Still, submitting your site to a limited number of relevant and higher-authority directories is still a good way to start building a profile of backlinks and reinforce your other strategies.  For webmasters who have a linkbuilding budget to work with, it’s always a good idea to spend a few bucks to get your site listed in authoritative directories such as the Yahoo Directory, Business.com, JoeAnt, Best of the Web and Directory Journal.

Because Google decides which links matter and which don’t, we listen up when they decide to speak on the subject. Recently, the Google Webmaster blog had a post on what constitutes a valuable link and what you can do to get those links. Read on to learn from the source the best and worst ways to build your links:

Best Strategies
• Become an expert in your field and get involved in an online community. Contribute to blogs and forums, but don’t spam them with shameless promotion for your site because quality links come through the relationships formed in the communities, not the comments themselves.
• Publish helpful, unique, compelling content. This could include anything from a tutorial to a video or tool. Original research or polls also attract quality links.
• For an immediate traffic bump, try humor. Funny content will get picked up by social media and can attract hundreds of links in a short time. According to Google, this is a quick pick-up rather than a long-term strategy.

Worst Strategies
• Buying links – While paid links may provide a small bump, Google says they’re likely to have no positive impact on a site’s performance over time.
• Exchanging links – When addressing this questionable link-building technique, Google’s Webmaster blog uses this ominous warning: “If your site’s visibility in the Google index is important to you it’s best to avoid [exchanging links].”
• Google tells Webmasters to submit their site to relevant, topical directories instead of mass-submissions to SEO link directories.

Basically, Google is saying what we’ve said all along – building links the right way wins the day. Google knows about all the shady link building tactics, and they’ve invested a fortune to make sure those efforts yield minimal results. Take the time to build links the right way, and you’ll see real results over the long haul.

How can you help readers and search engines find your content? Create evergreen pages. When we say “evergreen,” we mean a landing page for related content. These evergreen pages let you highlight the most important archived content on your blog, attract links, get subscribers and increase traffic.

How do evergreen pages work?

• Attract links: As everyone involved in SEO knows, links are very important to search engines, but so is in-depth content. You can attract links by using relevant, important keywords on your evergreen pages to get others to link to your site. If you guest blog, try to find ways to link to your evergreen pages.

• Getting subscribers: Your evergreen pages make you an authority on the subject they cover. Evergreen pages demonstrate that you’re an expert on a specific topic and if people find the information useful, they’ll have no problem subscribing to your blog.

• Sharing content: When someone reads great content on the Internet, it’s easily shareable. Your readers will refer back to your evergreen pages and recommend them to their friends if they find it valuable.

Evergreen pages are very easy to set up if you already have a lot of content on your site. A great way to set up an evergreen page is to look at your blog categories. Why not give each category an evergreen page? Having a home base for each category can help you get more keywords into your content and more links as well. If you don’t have blog categories, think of a topic that the readers of your blog would like more information about. Build an evergreen page around that topic and create new blog posts for linking.

Your evergreen pages can be chock full of keywords relevant to the subject and to your blog, which will help your site rank higher in search engines. Determine what people are searching for and go after those terms. As with all content, no one is going to read your evergreen pages unless you hook your readers right away. Use catchy headlines and enticing introductory paragraphs to grab the attention of your readers. Don’t forget to link to the content already on your site. Linking to related content gives your readers a place to go to get more information if the topic interests them, and it also helps you achieve the search engine rankings you desire.

To learn more about the importance of blogging, read this Fathom blog post.

To blog or not to blog – if that is your question, then reading this post should help you find the answer.

Creating a blog for your company is an excellent way to implement SEO strategy. Many people do not realize the important connections between successful, regularly-updated blogs and SEO rankings. TopRank Blogging recently published a survey covering the “Impact of Blogging on Search Engine Optimization.” Of the 326 participants, 87.4% “successfully increased measurable SEO objectives as a direct result of blogging” and 94% “reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months.”

Of course, all statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt, but the overall impression you get from this data is that blogging positively impacts SEO functions. The bigger question worth asking is: Why does this happen?

Those who have spent time in the industry and seen the tangible results provided by SEO-friendly blogs can attest that these information creations serve several important functions. Blogging can:

• Provide an easy way to create new, optimized content. When a company has a blog, they can create a stream of industry-relevant posts on topics that interest and inform their audience while providing supportive content for the keywords they’re targeting. New content can be posted instantly, and once readers become interested in your blog, you have a guaranteed amount of return traffic.

• Attract inbound links, cross-link and facilitate general inter-blogging networking. If you publish credible, relevant and informative posts, other reputable sites will take notice and link back to yours. It is also a good idea to provide links to other industry sites and post comments on other blogs to start developing beneficial networking relationships.  In addition, you can also use your blog to cross-link to relevant pages in your own website.

• Create a communication broadcast system that is instantly indexed by Google.  Blogs are the easiest way to instantly communicate information with your audience. They can be published with just a few clicks of your mouse, and Google instantly indexes them. Industry-relevant and keyword-rich information that Google immediately recognizes – what could be better?

In addition to these important benefits, blogging can also help your company communicate with target markets, establish authority in the industry, increase brand recognition, and rank for long tail terms. Blogs bring quality search traffic to your site while improving your visibility and presence in search engine results.

The benefits of blogs are many, and here at Fathom SEO we strongly encourage our clients to set up and maintain an informative, beneficial and SEO-friendly blog. As part of our Search Engine Ranking and Visibility (SERV) Program, our specialists provide blog consultation that can include everything from content and tagging suggestions to the complete establishment of a new blog.

Photo courtesy of cambodia4kidsorg on Flickr

The Pie of Search?

What do all these other (speculative) pieces mean for SEO?  Let’s break it down:

1.) 23.87% – Trust/Authority of the Host Domain

Surprise! Is it 2004?  This is SEO 101.  “Trust” probably refers to how long the site has been around, as a more established domain has traditionally had an easier time getting rankings than a new one.  Another part of the “authority” might relate to how much, if ever, Google has nailed you for cloaking or creating link farms and doorway pages.   The guiltier you are, the more likely you’ll be exiled from the first page.   Still, how many of you readers know of a new blog or other website that was able to go toe-to-toe with more established players for competitive keywords in a relatively short time thanks to good SEO and a little luck?

2.) 22.33% – Link Popularity of the Specific Page

No surprise here.  This means the page gets links from other pages.  Probably lots of them.   Quality over quantity, but quantity does count, at least according to Google’s own Matt Cutts (see the excerpted quote in point #2).

3.) 20.26% – Anchor Text of External Links to the Page

Really?  Is the year really 2009?  Not to say anchor text (the words framing a link–see below)  isn’t important, but almost as important as link popularity?  Anchor text is one of those things that is nice, but I think most people would take a link from a quality site without ideal anchor text over a mickey-mouse link that contains anchor text.  For example, I would take a generic link to my employer from SEOMoz any day over a link from my grandmother’s website that recommended us as an SEO firm.   No offense, Grandma.

4.) 15.04% – On-page Keyword Usage

Use your keywords and use them well.  Meta-data, page title, headings, even boldface.  Again, if you have no idea how to get keywords on your page and behind-the-scenes in the coding, read Fishkin’s piece.

5.) 6.91% – Registration + Hosting Data

This likely means consistency in redirecting multiple domains with mirrored content using the “301 redirect” command.  Another matter of consistency could be the use of “www-” vs. non-”www” or domains vs. subdomains  and other elements at the directory level.

6.) 6.29% – Traffic + CTR Data

Shocker this number isn’t higher.   Traffic to a page and how frequently people click on your page once it’s in the results should be carrying more weight in the ranking equation.  Assuming Google’s algorithm is logical, it stands to reason that a web page that earns a first-page Google listing and then promptly takes a traffic dive would have a hard time holding down that top spot.  But only 6% for this factor?  Child, please!  In the name of reason,  how many of the 72 people surveyed were sober when these questions were asked?

7.) 5.30% – Social Graph Metrics

This factor may be an extension (or subset) of link popularity.  In the hot realms of social media and online social networking, social graph metrics refer to mathematical models that determine hierarchy–and resulting quality of connections/links–in groups.   In other words, if you are well-connected to the right people online, then your particular web page is more likely to appear at the top.  For more detail on social graphs of online communities, check out Valdis Krebs.*

To get connected online, try Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,  Ning, or any number of websites/applications that allow easy sharing and social networking.

Now, to paraphrase the Dos Equis commercials, get out there and stay thirsty for rankings, my friends.

***

*Hat-tip to colleague Dominic Litten

Photo courtesy of DigiDi via Flickr.

You might want to check out our new SEO webinar, “How to Improve Sales with Search Marketing by Avoiding the 10 Biggest SEO Mistakes.”

The fast-paced program will cover everything from keyword selection and link building to SEO-PPC holistic thinking to local strategies.

Here’s a preview on a key mistake: ranking analysis

- Making judgments about rankings without a solid sense of what has been tried
- Not recognizing how much more can be accomplished with a page
- Failing to correlate one keyword observation with keyword performance on other pages
- Not weighing what adjustments make sense for which URL based on success on each search engine
- Protecting high rankings that drive little traffic
- Allowing too many keywords to rely on the home page for rankings

Would you like to know more? The webinar can help.

Check out, “When Viral Marketing Attacks: 9 Epic Viral Fails.”

He takes on everything from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb “threat” to a fake Walmart blog.

He introduces his assesment this way: “Viral Marketing is a tricky thing, and like fire and government it is powerful servant but a fearful master.”

Nice piece.

The February 19th program will be presented by David Meerman Scott, an award-winning online thought leadership strategist and best-selling author. Scott is the author of the No. 1 best-selling marketing book of 2007: “The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How To Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing & Online Media To Reach Buyers Directly.”

Our team works regular with clients, providing an array of strategic online marketing services, including guides, white papers, paid links, podcast distribution, articles, news releases, online video production and marketing, link development and much more.

Companies can showcase their expertise and build their brands by compliment these campaigns by taking advantage of expanding opportunities, including participating in blogs, forums and social networking websites.

View the news release or register today.

First of all, if you’ve never heard of the company making the pitch, you might want to check out their site. Usually a website speaks volumes, especially if you can’t find contact info, a Better Business Bureau logo, and client comments (with real names).

The person who recently pitched our client left their real phone number but no website address (another clue about being a goofball company). His name and number were enough to track him down (it was an amusing two-minute exercise). I’ll avoid the legal issues of showing his website. Suffice to say, it’s about three pages with a contact page that also goes to the About Me page with a funny, unprofessional sitting-at-my-desk-with-my-eyes jumping-out-of-my-face picture.

Back to links…

Link exchanges cry out: “We’re not relevant.” They also shout, “We only like link juice drops if there are any.” In other words, a page with a lot of links isn’t able to pass along a lot of link love.

Link exchanges are great if they’re relevant and discreet. If you find something valuable, link to it in your content. And if they like you, they may link back in a contextually sound way, not by adding you as listing No. 19 on a weird links collection page no one will visit and that lacks the power to make your favorite search term No. 1. on Google.

We’re always glad to help a client who is in doubt. Some sales pitches sound good, but smell bad when you give them any attention. Hopefully no one will hire the mystery man we came across.

Intellectual curiosity. I don’t mean intelligence or a high IQ, I mean intellectual curiosity, which is totally separate from intelligence. I do agree that you can’t be an idiot and be a good link builder, although the spam my inbox seems to indicate plenty of people are trying to refute that assertion.

Besides making me laugh, it made me think. As online publicists or link builders, we consider who might link to us and then lay out a straight path to acquire the desired link. Often we take direction from a client about who they would like to see linking to them. We see who links to our competitor and copy that strategy. These are all OK places to start.

However, the better path is to never stop asking questions. Never be afraid to be wrong. It takes confidence to propose something out of the ordinary. All really great advances in any endeavor require original thinking. The history of any great nation is filled with people who were not afraid to ask “What is on the other side of that mountain?” More importantly, these people found a new path to get to the other side.

I find myself getting tangled briers of minutia; PageRank, nofollow, deep linking, reciprocate or not, etc. All of these things can lead to a list of criteria or formulas for what makes a “good link”. How better off would I be if I just kept asking more questions about the business or website I am trying to promote? Who are you trying to reach? Why? What motivates your clients? Why are you different than the competition? Why should a stranger trust you?

Be a publicity pioneer! Blaze your own trail by asking more questions.

Eventually, we all realize we should actually ask people to link to our website. You might try to ask clients for a link. Perhaps explore your industry association member’s profile page for an opportunity to add a link. Develop partnerships with a provider of a related product. Do you notice a common element in these suggestions? There is always some relationship or logical connection. 

I don’t recommend the following:

1.  Register to an online forum
2. Make one post to request a reciprocal link
3. Never visit again

Recently this happened at our search engine marketing forum.

The brand new member posted a generic reciprocal link offer for her website. It was polite enough to begin with “Dear Friends” before launching into the spam link pitch.

The best part? This individual said:

I think visitors would find this site to be a great resource because we offer…

Note the ellipsis. She never gave a reason, even a lame one, why it was a good resource. I had to chuckle and made a couple follow-up posts to point out the flaws in this method of increasing your inbound links. By the way, many forums (including ours) “nofollow” user-generated links. This means my new friend is not even getting the link popularity she may have presumed would result from her drive-by link dropping.

Do a search on Google for “click here”. What is the first result? An Acrobat download page. If content is king, he allows links to play in his kingdom. Clicking on the cached version of the page shows that “click here” appears nowhere on the page. “These terms only appear in links to this page…”, Google tells us!

How did that happen? Many websites offering pdf documents say “Requires Acrobat Reader click here to download” – and you can guess the linked text. This practice is so widespread, that Acrobat OWNS the search phrase “click here”. They are welcome to it, by the way. But just how many links does it take to get first place on Google with no content to match? The numbers vary. Do a link: operator on Google. Google will tell you there are 34 sites linking to that page.

Try a link: operator on Yahoo! – it redirects to Site Explorer. Counting referring links from outside their domain gets you ten million plus.

Huh? How could Google miss ten million inlinks? They didn’t miss them. They just do not care to share them to any old passerby. If you verify with Google that you have control over a site – or at least the owner of the site agrees to share control – you can get a much better picture of the true number and nature of links pointing into that website. They even share with you the most popular text strings of inbound links.

If you have done a good job of putting good content on your website and you still are not as high as you would like to be on the search engine results page, look at how others are linking to you. If they all have your website’s name in the text link, consider asking for a modification to include a keyword or two. You can also do the heavy lifting and create html code snippets that contain the words you would like. Oh! And don’t forget to also create that great content that will actually encourage someone to link to you in the first place!

It’s ALL about relevance and the user experience. If your link goes against that, it’s a bad idea.

Q: Now when you say “paid links,” what exactly do you mean by that? Do you view all paid links as potential violations of Google’s quality guidelines?
A: Good question. As someone working on quality and relevance at Google, my bottom-line concern is clean and relevant search results on Google. As such, I care about paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings. I’m not worried about links that are paid but don’t affect search engines. So when I say “paid links” it’s pretty safe to add in your head “paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings.”

Got an example of something Google doesn’t like?

Q: Can you give me an example of the sort of things you’d be interested in hearing about?
A: Sure. Here are some paid text links on a site dedicated to Linux:

There are a few interesting things about these links. If you take off your webmaster hat and put on a user hat for a minute, you quickly start asking yourself questions like “Why is a Linux site linking to a bunch of poker, pills, and gambling sites?” Users often consider links like this spammy or low-quality. I’m sure some people will happily defend links like these, but in my experience people who search on Google don’t want links like these to affect Google’s search results.

The most telling comment. Read between the lines. Bold emphasis is mine.

Q: This is all well and fine, but I decide what to do on my site. I can do anything I want on it, including selling links.
A: You’re 100% right; you can do absolutely anything you want on your site. But in the same way, I believe Google has the right to do whatever we think is best (in our index, algorithms, or scoring) to return relevant results.

You can read more about paid linking strategies in our forum.