7 More SEO Link Strategies That You Need to Know

[This is part of the The Blogger’s Essential Guide to Search Engine Optimization Series.]

We’ve talked about the importance of links, both internal and external, for more than a few blog posts in this SEO Series and I wanted to spend at least one more post adding a few tidbits that you’ll find valuable as you move forward with your optimization.

All of these could have been compiled as individual posts and for certain I could have expanded my thoughts for more than one of them (and I may eventually do that) but at least you’ll get a good primer and overview so you can get started today.

Links, links, links! They are so important for not only your search engine ranking, PageRank (among many other factors) and overall pageviews, but they eventually lend themselves very importantly to your overall earning potential. Becoming a master student of link strategy should be one of your goals!

So here are 7 more link strategies you need to know about so that you can be the very best link blogger ever!

1. Influx of New Links – It’s been proven that an influx of new links to a site can give that site a significant lift in ranking, even, perhaps, permanently. For example, if a new site pops up with a lot of inbound links that site could outrank (again, perhaps permanently) a higher ranking than some long-standing sites. This can also apply to your own site and blog and that’s why it’s good to constantly prune and add more links on your own blog to keep your blog with fresh links. Become a link master and link architect today!
2. Keywords > Alt Attributes - Keywords in HTML give more value than Alt attributes when passing value. This is especially important for images and alt text. The important thing is to know is that if you want to get more value of your images and their links then have some accompanying linking around the images as well.
3. Links in Unique Content - The links in your blog posts and unique content will ultimately carry more value than the links in your more consistent navigation, like header, footer, and sidebars. This truly puts a premium on having unique content consistently.
4. Link from Trusted Sources - I’ve talked about this before but it’s worth mentioning again: The more trusted the pages that you link to are the more value you get in return. This is a good reminder to continually mention and link to very well-known sites along with others.
5. Links from Unique Domains - Getting (and giving) links to domains that you haven’t linked to before is a consistent strategy that one should employ. For example, getting 10 links from the same site is nice but getting 10 links from 10 different sites is far better. Be sure to give links to sites that you haven’t linked to before and hope that you can continue to get links from new sites as your blog increases in value and visitors.
6. Links Near the Top - It’s been shown in studies and research that links closer to the top of your content pass more rank and value than links near the bottom. If you were to employ this strategically you’d put the links that you want to give more value to at the top and work your way downward. I wouldn’t go crazy with this so as to frustrate your content and the flow for readability but it’s something worth keeping in mind.
7. External Links vs Internal Links - I’ve been asked a few times if internal links are important for SEO and the answer is a definite ‘Yes!’ But, it’s worth noting that external links carry a bit more weight than internal links but not enough to totally abandon internal linking – in fact, it’s one of the best ways to contribute to your overall SEO and you can actually control it!

There are definitely more strategies that I have in regards to linking and I’ll share them eventually but I wanted to at least get these down so that you can start using them for yourself!

[This is part of the The Blogger’s Essential Guide to Search Engine Optimization Series.]