One of the most important things you can do to improve your rankings in the major search engines, especially Google, is to increase your link popularity. You can increase your link popularity by:

• Reciprocal link trading with other websites
• One way link building
• In-site backlinks through keyword rich navigation
• A blog, Newsletter or RSS Feed

To faciliated link trading we would recommend building link pages in directory format. This means that you create seperate categories or themes for your link pages. Trading partners want to have their link placed on a theme relevent page, not on a page with a bunch of random links.

We would also recommend a search box in your directory. This will help search partners find their link. There is nothing more frustrating than trading links and then having to search through scores of pages to find your link. Link partners will really appreciate a search box.

When creating link pages or a link directory Do Not make link chains of your link pages. In other words you place a “next page” link at the bottom of the page and the only way you can get to the last page is to keep clicking the “next page” link. This make it difficult for link partners to find their link plus it can diminish PR dramatically the farther down the chain you navigate. We would also recommend not naming your pages with numbers. Naming a page “1″ is telling the spider that the page is about “1″ when that page may really be about “graphic design”.

When creating link pages Do Not put 100s of links on each. We would recommend no more than 40 links per page. Another thing, and this is not proven but there is some speculation, is that you may not want to call your links pages “links”. Google may not value the page as much if you do so.

Make sure that your link directory links are “hard links” that link directly with your link partner’s site. Some link directories use a redirect. These directories will not help your link popularity.

• Deleting Link Directories is Not Cool by Adam Sorensen
• Only honest link trading will help you get ahead
• Google killing links pages

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 13th, 2005 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Design Tips, Link Popularity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.