2009-09-09 by  Shawn Pringle

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Getting links is not the end of a process, but the beginning of one. Intelligently optimizing them is the main goal, a step above just link building, is a completely different beast with numerous interrelating factors. Taking the right perspective – and maintaining it – is the key to success.

Most people go about link building poorly, at best missing great opportunities and at worst getting their site banned by the search engines. Link optimizing is still not as widely practiced as you'd think. Most people still take the machine gun rather than sniper approach. Reading this article won't make you more of an expert, either, but being an expert should not be your goal. Going about it an intelligent way, getting the right understanding of the search landscape, improving your links, and getting metrics to back up what you are experimenting with, most definitely should be.

Waste not, want not

That old saying is a good reminder to anyone seeking to manipulate people and their actions – and the actions of the search engines. Make no mistake, this is precisely what you are doing, or trying to do, when you are creating a good link. But done right, good links are helpful guides for people and the engines.

Following the "waste not, want not" rule, you should understand that links tied to such text as "click here" and "read more" are a waste and absolutely worthless to your goals. Is anyone searching for "click here" or "read more"? No, so there is no rationale for using those terms for anchor text. Many people use those terms thoughtlessly as a default. Think through your decisions and maximize every opportunity. Anchor text is one of the most important factors to creating a good link, so wasting that opportunity is crippling your results before you've even begun. Every link you create is an opportunity to clearly describe the content of the destination page with keywords that will further your goals and link strength.

Anatomical structure

If you have done a reasonably good job of optimizing your site, it should end up with a decent internal link structure that distributes “link juice” throughout your site. Every well-optimized website should also have a solid, strategically arrayed set of inbound links from reputable, relevant sources and employing smart, high-quality anchor text.

The right "anatomy" for a well-optimized hyperlink has two requirements. First, it must have good, solid, appropriate anchor text, intelligently using the keywords you want to rank for in the search engines. "Intelligent" is the key here. Second, you need to intelligently place the link for maximum effectiveness. There's that intelligent thing again.

Multiple levels of insight

With inbound links coming into your site, the search engines do a comprehensive examination of what is being said in the anchor text in evaluating your page. If these links tend to use certain keywords, it is much more likely that that page, and your site, will be considered relevant to a search query using all or some of those words. This tends to make it more likely that your site will rank well for those particular queries.

For good link placement, you want to put the link on a site, and indeed the specific page, that is most relevant to your site and page. The more relevant the source, the stronger the link. This is the first rule of link placement. This may seem obvious, and this same advice is found from many sources, but it is mentioned here because it is still so often ignored. Many people with good intentions at the outset to get links only from the strongest, most relevant places completely forget this first rule of link placement when they see that getting huge quantities of weak, irrelevant links is easier. Getting a few highly relevant links trumps many irrelevant links every time. It takes more effort, but it gives you the best chance at long term success. Ask yourself, do you want your business to grow continuously, or would you rather that it fail in a couple months so you can arduously start all over again? And again.

New skills take time

It takes time and practice to become good at determining and gathering the best inbound links for you're your site. Don't fall victim to the temptation to take shortcuts. Right at the top of the "Never Do This" list is the admonition, "Don't spam." If you attempt to mix in some kind of spam tactic here, you could poison even the best set of quality inbound links and squander all your effort. Of course, that happens a lot in the world of (poor) SEO, but the best thing is to learn from others' mistakes, not your own—especially avoidable ones like this. Spread a lot of link juice around your site while avoiding known pitfalls.

Search engines are all about gathering data so they can make intelligent and accurate assessments about your site, primarily based on your content, internal links, and external links to you (their structures and components). Putting yourself and your site through these paces will give your site and business a solid foundation and give you the best chance for solid growth and success. An additional benefit to this is that you will develop, design and even stumble across some keywords and word combos you never developed, designed or thought of before. Of course, the process never really ends, and you're always pruning and strengthening. A little progress every day and before you know it, you'll start surprising yourself with your newfound, high-quality skills. Quality results from starting with and maintaining the right perspective and, of course, quality is always a long time in the making…but it's worth it.

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