5. Linking Strategy Part II: Maximising your Linkability

To generate inbound links and boost your link popularity you need to maximise your linkability. That means having good content that's accessible and easy for other websites to link to.

(iii) What other sites could link to you?

Steps (i) and (ii) will have identified interesting sites that either link to you or to your competitors. But this list is probably not exhaustive.

You can add further sites by:

• Conducting a link popularity test on all the interesting sites you have identified. Trawling through the results of this is sure to add more important and relevant sites to your list. For example, scan the links that come in to travelintelligence.net and you�ll find such directory sites as www.travelair.co.uk and www.travelgate.co.uk . Such sites can be a rich source of further links.
• Checking the content of the sites you have identified for further links
• Visiting industry specific and general portals. About.com is a great place to start. The site publishes over 700 internet guides to different topics and is one of the highest traffic sites on the web. For the hotel example we used in the previous section, the guide found at http://hotels.about.com/mbody.htm would be very useful. Trawl through this and you�ll find more potential linking targets. After about.com, look at Yahoo!, dmoz and other portals
• Conduct searches on Google, AltaVista and other search engines using your own keywords. Trawl through the results looking for relevant sites.

Add promising target sites to your worksheet. This should now give you a fairly exhaustive list of sites. This sounds like hard work - and it is. But the results will not only give you targets for your linking strategy but it will also give you valuable insight into your industry online.

You can use software to organise and speed up the process. Arelis from www.axandra.com is designed specifically to conduct a linking strategy. Note that this software still recommends visiting every site and composing an individual email request to each target.

The Arelis screen above allows you to manage a complete linking strategy on your desktop. A trial version is available for free with licenses starting at just under $100.

(iv) Understand why external sites would want to link to you

The simple answer is because you are able to provide something of value to their visitors that also enhances their own site. Without that value, no worthwhile external site will link to you.

In order to maximise your linkability you need to think about both the external site and the visitors they receive.

Here are some reasons why external sites will link to you:

• You provide a product or service of interest to their visitors. For example, BizTrip provide many links to online travel resources.
• You provide a service that enhances their web site directly. An online retailer may include a direct link to a currency converter online.
• You have published an article, research report or white paper of benefit to their visitors. Debbie Weil�s WordBiz newsletter provides links to great external resources (as well as publishing some of her own)
• You provide an extensive library of links on a particular topic.
• You have a strategic relationship or partnership.

So where do you fit in? Which of these reasons are suitable for your site? What significant value do you already have? What can you create? What will it cost you and what results can you expect?

(v) Set objectives for your linking strategy

Your objectives should be related to what you want to achieve overall in your business or organisation. Achieving business results should be the bottom line.

At the basic level you could set yourself objectives such as:

• To generate at least x inbound links to your site
• To raise the PageRank of your home page from 2 to 7 (say) - thus making your site more attractive to search engines.
• To generate y% more visitors to your site
• To outperform your top 3 competitors in link popularity.

These are reasonable objectives to have, but they do not address your core business or organisational objectives. Think of your linking strategy in terms of your overall objectives. How about:

• To raise the sales conversion rate on your site by x% through attracting more qualified leads
• To understand and make contact with the top online resources within your industry
• To persuade at least 50% of those online resources to provide a link to your site
• To find at least 3 strategic partners that will give you access to new markets.

All of these things are possible through an effective linking strategy and will bring long-term benefits to your business or organisation. Implementing the strategy will open up a new range of challenges and opportunities and teach you a lot about how the web really works. Armed with that knowledge and experience you will learn how to refine and achieve linking objectives that really deliver business results.

(vi) Make sure your site is link-friendly

Put yourself in the position of someone thinking of linking to your site - would they find it easy to do so?

They will have the choice of linking to your home page, linking to one of the major sections on your site or linking to a specific document or function. Most external sites will want to link directly to documents or functions but site owners may prefer to have people come through the home page. You have to weight up the pros and cons but you should come down on the side of offering best value to your target sites.

You site should be organised so that it is easy to link either to the home page, major sections or individual documents. This means that:

• Each important document or function should have its own URL. Frames or javascript will cause problems and should be avoided. If you can�t avoid them, you�ll have to find an acceptable workaround.
• Important sections of your site should have their own titles and descriptions.
• Avoid using multiple URLs if at all possible. Some sites may use their corporate web address and brand address to direct people to the same home page.
• Don�t insert registration requirements that block access.

Your Progress

At the end of this stage, you should have completed worksheets 3, 4, 5 and 6. You will have a good understanding of who links to you and your competitors.

All worksheets are available here