2.06 Link optimisation

The power of the internet lies in the way that web sites and web pages link together. If your site is useful then other web sites will want to provide a link to it. The search engines, Google in particular, look at how many of the sites in their index provide links to your web site. If a lot of other sites find you important enough to provide you with a link then your ranking improves.

Page Rank
Google has an element in its algorithm known as page rank. Every page it indexes is allocated a score depending on how many incoming links point at it and how many outbound links it contains. Every page rank is then recalculated to create new scores decided by the number of incoming links and the relative page ranks of each page. This alters everyones ranking – so they reiterate the process another time or two until scores settle down.

Link popularity
The basic count of links pointing at your site is known as “Link Popularity”. Once your site is optimised, easy for the search engines to index and packed with relevant content, then the most powerful way to improve the ranking of your site is by working on your link popularity. If you approach the task with the best interests of your clients in mind then it will also bring you the right sort of visitors.

Improving your link popularity
While this can be a time-consuming process it generally takes you some interesting places online and helps you understand how your site fits into place in the community of sites around yours. Your first task is to find sites with related content that are willing to trade links.

Finding link sites
Start by entering selected key words and phrases from your site into a search engine.
Including elements of your address and the addresses of your clients is likely to take you to sites serving your local community. These are probably going to be destinations for your clients and quite likely to be happy to exchange links.
Searching using the common species or breeds you treat will find animal sites worldwide that are less likely to be suitable for a link exchange. Searching on less common breeds are a better bet. If you have particular interests or experience in, say, potbellied pigs then a potbellied web site will probably exchange links to help aficionados of the breed in your area. If you also provide quality information about the breed that compliments their content, then a link exchange is even more likely.

Selection
Once you have a collection of links you should decide whether providing a link to each site will serve the interests of your visitors and whether you would want a link to your practice to appear on their pages. Don't dilute the quality of your site just for the sake of a few links. You then need to contact the owners of each site and request an exchange of links. Do this with a personal e-mail, praising their site and pointing out the mutual advantages to their visitors of a link exchange.

Pre-emptive linking
Our approach is that we will only request links from sites that we are happy to link to even if they don't provide a link in return. We put a link online before contacting the other site. We then send them an e-mail that informs them of the link we have provided, offers them an opportunity to edit the text accompanying their link, requests a link in return and includes the suggested text and graphics they might like to use.

Bit by bit
There is no need to do this all at once. Spending a few minutes looking for sites each time that you go online is likely to be more efficient in the long term.

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