Deep Linking Strategy
for Content Sites
Linking
- what a mess if you don't know what's going on. Either
linking is "IN" or
it's "OUT" according to what you read these days.
Here's the good news: Linking Works.
Here's the bad news: How It Works Has Changed!
The good thing is you are going to pick up a linking tip
today that will put you light years ahead of most webmasters
who think a reciprocal link directory is all you need to
gain link popularity in Google and traffic from other sites.
Link directories are still ok, but the key
is moderation. Directories with thousands of links are a
dark ages website promotion tactic.
Today there are many people focusing on content again, thank
god. And that means you have a lot more real estate than
just a home page and a link directory to work with.
People have written to me to completely disagree with me
on what I am about to show you, but believe the expert, it
works!
Say you have 500 pages of article and resource content on
your site. If you are publishing articles on several categories
you could have many more pages than that.
But even if you only have a 30 page site right now, it should
be growing all the time and will be large eventually. (If
not, forget about Google staying excited about your site
if it never changes.)
Each of those articles and resource pages is a link to your
site waiting to happen.
There are two ways to get links to your site here:
1) Ask for a link to your main page in exchange for a link
on one of your relevant article pages to the site you are
requesting an exchange with.
2) Deep Linking: Ask for a link right
back to the specific page on your site you are going to
link to them on. Again,
find relevant pages of content to the sites you are going
after. People respond well to this, especially if you say
you are limiting your outgoing links to "further resources" to
5 per page. (The number is up to you.) What does this do
for your site?
1) It gets webmasters WAY more excited about linking with
you because you are putting them ON your site, not in some
cobweb-ridden part of your site that no one ever visits.
2) It lets other site owners know
you have actually taken the time to review their site enough
to know where they would
best fit on your site according to the topic of the page
you want to link to them on. Again - this is a way different
message to them than the "Let's swap links" letter
we all trash these days.
3) You start building link popularity and traffic direct
to pages within your site other than your index. (If you
choose to direct swap with them.)
4) It gives you leverage to ask for a better link from other
sites than just being thrown in their link dump (link directory)
where, again, far fewer people ever visit. You command the
power to ask for a similar link of importance from the pages
their visitors actually see. Win-Win
5) You increase the value of your links page because you are
not loading it down with any and every person who will link
with you. You can go back to old school linking to sites that
you honestly do recommend and that list can be far smaller
and really fit on 1-2 pages. All of a sudden you have traffic
to your links page again and can truly reward webmasters who
are on it with some traffic.
6) The links you get this way are going to be some of the
first links you have probably ever gotten that actually send
you significant traffic. The same goes for your link partners.
"But Jack, I don't want to send traffic away from my site!" Yes
you do, in fact. Because you are asking your link partners
to do the same. Links like this are just as profitable in the
long run as Google Adsense ads because you are finally engaging
in a real traffic exchange and leveraging your eproperty for
what it's really worth. Trust me - this works. Send some traffic
out and see what happens to your referrer stats.
Never give more than you get. Many people won't understand
this form of linking for another year or so. They will try
to shove your link in a dark hole on their site. Don't let
them do it!
If someone doesn't understand the power of deep linking
from their content pages, send them this article as a last
ditch effort and tell them Jack said so. Otherwise, move
on, take their link down, and find someone smart enough to
see where linking is headed.
Overall, you are going to find it
is much easier to get links this way, even from sites bigger
than yours. Telling
people "I want to link to you as a recommended resource
on (name of article) page..." tells them that you are
a pro and not some schmuck who has a linking program that
spits out cookie cutter emails.
Too much work? Hire someone and pay them per link they secure
in your name. Write the letter and have them fill in the
blanks for specific sites. Teach them how to go through your
site, learn the content, and go out and find relevant recommended
resources for each page.
You'll be surprised to find out how
cheaply you can get good work done these days on Elance.com
and other "for
hire" sites.
Sit back and watch your incoming QUALITY
links soar from month to month, as well as your search
engine rankings !
Back
to search engine ranking articles
|
