Literal Link Building

When building up the links for your website (both internal links and inbound links from other websites), it is always worth remembering that it pays to be literal.

Think of your link text as a sign post which tells both website visitors and search engine spiders what they will find if they click on the link. The more signposts you put up and the more explicit, obvious and prominent the links are, then the clearer it will be both to your visitors and to the search engine spiders and bots as to what they will find.

As such, it should be apparent now that link text both within your own website and linking in from other sites should really never say things such as “read more”, “click here” and so forth, since as signposts, such link text is virtually useless.

Being literal, however, does not mean that you cannot vary your link text now and again. For inbound links, this will actually give off a more natural and organic feel to your inbound links from a search engine's perspective - a good sign that you aren't attempting to artificially doctor your website's relevance and importance beyond what it actually is. Search engines are smart enough to associate many synonyms and related words these days and they will ammalgamate related words together when evaluating what your website is relevant for, so while concentrating on the focus and context of your inbound links you should also pay some attention to variety. So for instance, if I had a web site about iPods I might go for internal links and inbound links concentrating mainly on using the keyword 'iPod', but also perhaps make sure there were some for 'music player', 'mp3 player' and so forth, as well as 'iPod music player' and 'iPod mp3 player', 'Apple iPod player'. If you think logically and literally, while keeping in mind word associations and the principle of signposting, then you can ensure that you have an effcient and relevant link building strategy, and help to ensure that as few words as possible are wasted.