If Content is King, then surely Relevance is Queen!

There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the search
engine world of late and there are lots of conspiracy
theories as to why these things happen.

It is easy as a webmaster to get caught up in these webs of
intrigue.

You get email notes about them, you view so-called experts'
thoughts on bulletin Boards - hey you probably even read
things in newsletter articles!

Well I hope so anyway....

The big driver for webmasters currently appears to be
content and link building.

While link building is important I don't believe it makes
Queen. Maybe a Prince. Content and links DO go hand in
hand but, without relevance, the Kingdom is doomed. Sorry I
will stop the analogy now! :-)

If your site is about finance, then finance content is best
supported by finance link exchanges. Relevance!

If your site is about finance, then finance content
supported by casino link exchanges from a PR8 site while in
the short term may help,?but all the signs are saying this
is not a long term strategy.

Okay,so what is the best strategy?

Keep EVERYTHING relevant. It is that simple.

Make sure that you only swap or link to sites that are
relevant to the content on your pages. Yes I am suggesting
link exchanging on pages of your site not a links page.

Links pages seem to be being abused. There are rumours that
pages called links, resources or partners are not passing
page rank. You could be wasting your time building links
that are not giving you any benefits!

Delivering relevant links from relevant content is the
future.

Look at sites such as www.bbc.co.uk or
www.independent.co.uk. News sites have the right idea.
They have 2 or 3 relevant internal links to other
articles on the same topic or links to internal tools that
are related. These usually can be found at the right hand
side of the article.

They also then have weblinks or external links to sites of
interest that are related to the topic. These are relevant!

Another benefit of this is that with a content rich site you
can add hundreds of links quite legitimately and really add
some value both to your Rankings and your users.

With a content-poor site it is difficult, you have to add
link pages or create a links directory. A five page site
will need to add 10 or 12 good link pages to compete and
even then with algorithm changes, this may not be prudent.

Having a site with 400 pages means you can easily add 3
links per page, so you have 1200 link options straight away.

Hopefully this explains that relevance runs a close second
to content.

Always bear in mind when writing content that relevant
links will not only boost your search engine rankings,
but you will also add a service to your visitors.

Jason Hulott is Director of J2 Squared, leading specialists in Internet Consultancy whose specific aim is to drive more revenue to websites. Their main area of focus are the insurance, finance, and automotive industries.

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Beware of webmasters with PR 5 or above sites offering you a link exchange with a high PR site and an inspection of their link directory suggests that your link will end up on a non indexed page i.e. a useless link that is unlikely to ever improve. If the link exchange was with a PR 2 or 3 site there is at least reasonable potential for the PR of the page to increase if the link directory has been fairly constructed. Reduce exposure to link scams To reduce your exposure to such scams it is essential to carefully vet all potential link partners in the first instance. Enter link back partner details in a database. As an absolute minimum, enter their URL, the location of the link back on their site, the page rank of the page on which your link is located, the date of the link exchange and a real e-mail address for the contact person. Use a good link checking program monthly and contact offenders as soon as you find your link is missing from their site. This is now essential to keep link partners honest. This problem is a direct consequence of the current page rank system and fierce competition for top rankings. It is easier to retain existing link partners than to continually find new ones. Points to look for when Assessing Potential Link Partners Before trading links, look carefully at the other site ? 1. If there is no link to the link directory on the index page ?Reject. You will get no traffic from that site. 2. Look at the structure of their link directory and count the number of clicks from their index page to where their link to you is likely to be located and then deduct that number from the PR of the site's index page. If that page is PR3 and there are three clicks to get to the page on which your link will be located, that page will have a PR0. That link will be worthless unless the site gets a minimum of a PR4. 3. If you have not already done so, download Google's tool bar. If the page rank bar is grayed out, when you are looking at a site, never trade links with that site. The grey bar is said to indicate that the site is banned by Google. I do not know if that is true but I have only ever seen two sites produce grey bars. 4. A growing number of sites with dynamically generated link directories have no page rank on any link pages even though the directories are often constructed in such a way that you would expect the page to rank to be 2 points below the home page. I do not know how most are achieving this. The visible way is to have multiple folders and index pages leading to the links pages and the number of clicks from the home page destroys any potential page rank for the link page. A rare method is to add a no index command for the link directory in their robots.txt file. Just remember links to such sites are one way links from your site to their site. You give them a good link and they give you a worthless link. 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Many high PR sites will not trade links with you unless you can place their link back on a minimum of a PR4 page. That way you can start shooting for the top once your index page makes a 5 as opposed to a 7 with the way many link directories are set up. When you are shooting for the top, it helps you get those high pr links you need to make it to the top.