Linking schemes
Linking schemes are nothing more than the structure of how your Web site is linked to other sites, how other sites are linked to you, and where internal links lead. Good Web design principles include all three types of linking schemes, and all are important to search engines because what a search crawler is looking for is site usability first — how easy it is for visitors to go from one place to the next on your Web site — and then site relevancy, or how appropriate your site is to the topic for which a site visitor is searching. Crawlers literally follow all the links on a Web page to make sure that what’s connected together makes sense and is useful in the context of where the links appear both in text and in navigational menus. When you’re creating your linking schemes, remember that the ultimate goal is to make your site as usable and as valuable as possible to your site visitors. Assume that your visitors have landed on your page because it contains information for which they’re searching; the idea here is to make your site as
valuable to those visitors as possible by providing your visitors with the info they’re looking for and then some. (It’s the and then some that keeps them coming back for more.) Creating value for your user encompasses one concept — provide the user the information he seeks. It’s that simple. That doesn’t mean that you need to have every detail or product related to a specific topic on your site. But if you don’t have it and you don’t plan to put it there, at least be prepared to point visitors to another site that does have the information or products sought.
All of that is accomplished through linking. You’re either linking to another page on your site where the information being sought is available or you’re linking to another site entirely. In return, you should also have other sites linking to your own, for the same reasons. (I have some tips on how to get other sites to link back to you later in the chapter.)
Internal linking
Internal linking is the process by which the pages on your site are actually linked together. The type of links isn’t nearly as important as the way in which the pages are linked, but even the structure can have some benefits. For example, text links — called hotlinks — can be more valuable than graphic links because they allow you to use your keywords within the link.
But it’s also important to have a consistent navigational structure — the links that usually grace the side or top of a page that lead to different sections of your Web site. Both hotlinks and navigational links can be used in your internal linking process.
Using keywords in your navigational structure gives you freebie opportunities to use them — the keywords within links don’t count toward the keyword density of a page because the percentage of times a keyword is used is based solely on the content on the page. This means you can use your keywords more often. But using hotlinks does count toward keyword density, so
be careful about how you place those links.
It’s also important that no matter how your links are formatted, you always need to leave an escape hatch — every page on the site has to have a clearly defined navigation area with easily recognizable links that make it a snap to return to whatever page the visitor wants. Users who click from one page to another in your Web site may not appreciate having to click the Back button to get them back to the page they were previously on. Even more importantly,
if there’s no way for users to go back from whence they came, they’ll leave. Typical surfer behavior when they can’t escape a page is to close the window or browser that’s pointing to the site on which you have them trapped. They may also just type a new address in the browser bar and navigate away from your page that way.
Internal links all qualify as navigational links, even when they include hotlinks. Use these links wisely, and always provide a way for users to navigate back the way they came. I don’t care whose fault it is; if you lock a visitor in Web page hell, she’ll leave and probably won’t come back.
It’s far better to have all your pages (even those that are unrelated) connected in a loose kind of way. Every page should have a way to go back to the main page as well as a way for visitors to get back at least to the previous page if not to the beginning of a section. It may be that your navigational structure expands to show previous pages or sections of your Web site,
based on where the visitor is on the site at any given moment. Whatever you choose to do, make sure visitors have plenty of ways out.
When you’re creating the way that your internal pages are linked, also remember to keep like pages grouped together. When you think of the structure of your Web site, think of it as a tree. The trunk of the tree is your main page, and each of the branches is a major topic. Subtopics are the smaller branches off the main branches, and the leaves are individual pages of information.
If you were to draw your Web site structure, it should resemble (in an abstract kind of way) a tree lying on its side, as shown in Figure E1
Each different topic of content on your Web site should be related to the overall theme of the site — nobody would argue with that — but each topic should also be further broken down into smaller categories so that site visitors can quickly find what they’re looking for. For example, if your site is about healthy cooking, every page on your site should be related to healthy
cooking. However, individual sections of your site can be broken down into the different types of dishes that you cook or the techniques that you use to create healthy dishes. Keep like content together and keep it all related to the main theme of the Web site.
Figure E1
External linking
External linking — the links you use to connect your Web sites to other relevant sites on the Web — is also going to play a major role in the way that your Web site is categorized by search engine crawlers. External links lead away from your page, and for this reason, many Web site designers think it’s best to avoid external links on a page. Not true. In fact, if you don’t have some element of external linking on your page, it becomes an obstacle in both search rankings and in helping potential visitors find the information they’re searching for.
Search crawlers look for external linking on a page as a sign of how well connected the page is to the industry or category that it’s included in. For example, if your site is about mental health issues, users will expect to find links to other sites on the same topic. Crawlers will too. And if a crawler examines your site and finds you’re not linked to other related sites, it devalues the
site, assuming that the site will be less useful to site visitors (because no single site can have every piece of information about a topic or category). What you don’t want to do is create a Web page that’s an island — surrounded by cyberspace, but cut off from everything. Even the most beautiful islands can become useless if nothing connects them to the rest of the world. And if your Web site isn’t connected to other Web sites, (especially where search crawlers
are concerned), the usability rating of the site falls considerably.
It’s necessary to have outgoing and incoming external links to your site. But there’s a catch (isn’t there always?): The external links on your site should lead to or from other sites that are relevant to the content on your site. If you’re linking to other sites in some disorderly, couldn’t-figure-it-out-witha-clear-explanation kind of way, you might as well not have any links at all.
Search crawlers follow every link leading out from your site and will evaluate the content on the linked site for relevancy. If the content doesn’t compute, your search rankings will plummet.
Having one or two links to unrelated sites isn’t a big worry. It’s not at all unusual for your best friend, who sells handmade soaps, to link to your Web site about money management. But if you want search engines to take notice of your Web site, I recommend that you have far more links to other sites related to money-management vehicles, tools, and information.
Reciprocal linking One way to gather links to your site and to share your site with other relevant
Web sites is to use reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is the new-age version of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You find sites that would be of interest to your site visitors and then approach the Web site owner with the offer of putting a link to her site on your own if she’ll do the same for you in exchange.
It’s a good strategy to get some inbound links built into your site if it’s a new site, but don’t rely on this type of linking to gain you much favor with search crawlers. A limited amount of reciprocal linking is acceptable, but when a search engine is examining the links to your site, it ranks them by determining if the keywords used on your Web site are similar to the keywords on the sites that are linking to you. That’s why links always need to be generated
out of true interest in the content on your site. If your link to another page is matched by a link back to your own page on too many pages, the value of those links is lessened because the pattern of “I’ll link to you if you link to me” becomes obvious.
Think about the wildly popular Web sites in your business (or personal) scope. Even better than just thinking about it, surf on over there and have a look. Click through a few of the external links on the page and look at where they lead. Are there links back to the page you just left? In most cases, the answer to that will likely be “No” because the most popular pages on the
Web don’t need reciprocal linking schemes. People link to them all the time because the site offers information that’s of interest to everyone concerned with that topic. It’s all about placement
One last strategy to extend your linking mileage: Where you place your links matters. When a crawler is navigating through your site, it’s looking at the usability of your site. So, if you’re hiding links in places that users can’t find them simply to improve your Web site ranking, you’ll find your Web site in search results’ nether regions. And yes, that’s a trick some Web site designers really use. The idea behind hidden links is to have them there because you must have that linking structure, but to have the links hidden in places users don’t think to click so they won’t navigate away from your Web site. Wrong move. That kind of linking strategy will turn the curious search crawler into a snotty search crawler that doesn’t score your Web site well for
ranking purposes.
Keep in mind that hidden links are very different from strategies like using metadata keywords, as I talk about earlier in this chapter. Metadata keywords and tags are built into the structure of your site and are designed to provide additional information to crawlers. Hidden links and keywords are actually built into the visitor-facing structure or user interface. Hidden links and keywords, however, are intentionally blended into the site so that visitors can’t see them.
This is a deceptive way to include elements of Web design that crawlers look for but that a Web site owner might not want the site visitor to see.
Creating a well-designed site that uses a more traditional link placement structure is much better. Not only are Web surfers accustomed to seeing a navigation structure, or links, in a few places (the top of the page, the left side of the page, or within the text), but a well-designed site meets a need — the visitor’s need for information. By meeting that need, you give visitors a
reason to return to your site again and again.
Most often on a well-designed site, some combination of those navigation structures is going on. Most Web sites have their main navigation bar on the left side of the page, and users know that that’s where they can usually go to find the link to the next page within the site. Links to other sites can be included in the text or in combination with the navigational structure on the
sides of the page.
Once in a while, a page will have the main navigational structure on the right. In fact, that’s a common structure in blogs, and there’s nothing wrong with setting up your page that way. Web crawlers don’t give a hoot if your navigational structure and other links are located on one side of the page or the other. But it’s important that however you decide to do it on the main page
of your Web site, you maintain that structure across every other page on the site. Users get frustrated if the navigation scheme changes on every single page, and Web crawlers will notice the inconsistency and lower the usability ranking of your site.
Keyword marketing is like watching the news. A big story could hit today, and it might hang around for a few days until journalists have wrung all the interest out of the story. Then something else happens, and those same journalists toss that story aside in favor of the newer, more interesting piece of news. With keyword marketing, marketers might be willing to fight hard to win the bids on one keyword today, only to find that another keyword is much
more popular and worth more to them in advertisements tomorrow. These changes affect the income that you make from each click through, as well as affecting the click throughs themselves. When the higher-paying marketer moves on, it opens a keyword for lower-paying advertisers. Sometimes, though, those lower-paying advertisers aren’t writing ads that are as appealing
to your users.
Users’ moods change, too. What they’re interested in today will certainly not be the same tomorrow or next week. So, to keep your CTR optimized, you have to stay on top of your keywords. Watch the effectiveness of the keywords around which your Web site is built. And don’t be afraid to test new and different keywords, especially if your traffic statistics begin to fall. Your AdSense income depends on you staying at the razor’s edge of the marketing
curve. And that requires attention from you.
