Search Engine Optimization: For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 15. Finding Sites to Link to Yours

In This Chapter

• Getting other sites to link to you

• Finding who links to your competition

• Reciprocal link campaigns

• Building links through syndication

In Chapter 14, I explain the value of linking — why your site needs to have backlinks (links from other sites pointing to it). Now you have the problem of finding those sites.

Chapter 14 gives you some basic criteria. You need links from pages that are already indexed by the search engines. Pages with high PageRanks are more valuable than those with low PageRanks. Links from related sites may be more valuable, and so on. However, when searching for links, you probably don't want to be too fussy to start with. A link is a link. Contrary to popular opinion, links bring value — even links from unrelated sites.

It's common in the SEO business to say that only links from "relevant" sites have value, but I don't believe that's true. How do search engines know which sites are relevant, and which aren't? They don't. Sure, they can guess to some degree. But they can't be quite sure. Therefore, my philosophy is that every link from a page that's indexed by search engines has some kind of value. Some will have a higher value than others, but don't get too hung up on relevance. And don't worry too much about PageRank; sure, if you can go after sites with high PageRanks first, do it, but often it makes sense to simply go get links and not worry too much about the rank of the linking page.

Use this chapter to get ...