Linking Strategies

This article details why you need in-bound links, and some methods of gathering them.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) (part 1).

Why do you NEED links?

Links do two things: they contribute to the search engine ranking of your site (see Google PageRank below), and provide a potential route for in-bound hits.

In order to be visible on the web, you must cultivate links to your site, however, any old link will not do: some are much better than others.

Google PageRank explained

A PageRank (PR) is the result of a "ballot" among all the other pages on the web. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support for that site. If there are no links to a web page, there is no support for that page.

The PR of any page depends on the number of all pages that link to it, and their individual PageRanks. A page that has in-bound links from many pages with high PageRanks receives a high rank itself.

Your home page will usually be the place in-bound links point to, and so it will have the highest PR of all pages on your site (which makes it the most desirable spot for an out-bound link). You may have experienced requests to place an out-bound link on your home page? Generally, putting a link to another site on your own home page is a bad thing: why invite someone who has just arrived to leave?

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each web page on the Internet. A PR of 3 should be easily achievable by most web sites practicing link exchanges.

The best types of links

The best type of links (in order of merit) are:

those from a high ranking site,
one way links (i.e. a link to your site which is not reciprocated), and
relevant links (i.e. a link from a site that has related content).

Sadly, high ranking sites do not often provide outbound links - they don't need to!

One way links are difficult to negotiate, as few sites will give without receiving, however - there is one method of creating one-way links - article writing!

The worst types of links

The worst type of links (in order of increasing lack of merit) are:

irrelevant links,
from "link farms", and
third party links.

Irrelevant links (say from a supplier of orthopedic mattresses) cannot be expected to bring many visitors to an art site.

"Link farms" are sites that have thousands of links to every possible subject matter. There is no way anyone is every going find and follow a link to your site.

Third party links are those where you are asked to link to one web address, but the link back comes from a different domain. Third party links effectively create one way links to a site. The back links come from an address that has no in-bound links, and therefore a low ranking. Always check that the top level domain address you are asked to link to is the same as the address as the page where your link will be reciprocated.

* Take the trouble to validate link exchanges after a few weeks have passed. Unfortunately there are a number of unscrupulous webmasters who post links temporarily, and delete these when a back link is in place.

Top Sites

Top Sites are thematic lists of web sites (for example, pencil drawing sites). The list order is compiled according to votes in, so the member sites with the most votes appear at the top of the list, and theoretically receive more hits from visitors to the Top Site.

Top Site membership is a form of link exchange: they just happen to provide and utilise a count of visitor traffic. Therefore your site does not need to be at the top of the list to derive a benefit from Top Site membership; the link will contribute to your site PR regardless of what list position you occupy.

To be included in Top Site lists, a voting code/banner must be installed on your web site (give and you shall receive).

more information on Top Sites.

Link Exchange Programs

There are a number of link exchange programs where web site owners can register their interest in exchanging links. You can either trawl through the list of sites wishing to exchange links, or wait for others to come to you. You do not have to accept link exchange requests from sites you prefer not to link to.

The direct approach

If you find a site you would like to exchange links with, make a direct approach: maybe some of the Artist on our Links to Artists page, or Art Resource sites on our Links for Artists page would like to swap links with you?

Your link code

The format of your link matters. It provides an opportunity to emphasize your key words. Here is an example of a good link:

This is how the link looks: Your web site title. If you mouse-over this link, you should see a little title tag. This format "optimises" the keywords in your web site name.

Some final words of advice

Do not reject links from a web site with a "0" PR. They may grow into a site with a high PR.
Be cynical about link exchanges: they are merely a promotional device.

Resources

PageRank tools
	You may wish to start by checking your PR. There are many sites that do this, but FreePRchecker is as good as any. NB: For some reason, PR checking sites have a tendency not to work from time to time.
	ValidRank provide an excellent free Back link Checker Tool. This shows how many web sites are linking back to you, the Page Rank of the linking page, and whether the page has nofollow tag (an HTML attribute used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index).
Top Sites	Links for Artists for more Top Sites.
	Animal Artist Hall of Fame is a very popular site that yeilds good traffic volumes. The only down-side is that the top site owner expects the voting link to be on your home page.
	Annuaire International is a very general art site.
	Pencil Art is a well run site with only relevant sites listed.
Link exchange programs
	The Link2me link exchange program benefits from being a fully automated process.