CNC Topsites

In this article we have already covered the importance of inbound links to your site but often just as important as inbound links is the way in which sites link you. What I mean by this is that there are a number of ways in which a website can send you visitors. They can link you via an picture they can link you via a text link that says ‘Click Here’ or they can link you via ‘Your Site Name’ and the link in itself can be very different, for most sites you can access the same page using a number of variations of the same address. For many sites www.yoursite.com will load the same page as if you were linked with the address http://www.yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com/index.html or just index.htm or index.php or even http://yoursite.com all of them will in general load the same page yet to many search engines these are essentially different sites, so it is important to endeavor to keep a relatively consistent inbound link structure to really try and put as much support behind one address – generally your homepage. This also applies to with which words an inbound link uses to link your site meaning you want your inbound links to contain your main keywords. In many cases most inbound links will be in the form of the fellow webmaster using your site title which hopefully will contain your main keyword/s in it. For example (sticking with Waldo’s World of Warcraft site) Waldo doesn’t want site link him using the keywords ‘Waldo’s Site’ or ‘Click Here’ for Waldo’s Site. He would much prefer the inbound link to be link to be something to the effect of ‘Waldo’s World of Warcraft Hints and Tips’ or ‘Waldo’s World of Warcraft Site’ as these have more relevant keywords that Waldo would be optimizing his site for, and once again it is best to try and get as many of the inbound links as possible to be to similar effect rather than an assortment of variations. Some might think that this is putting all your eggs in one basket but when it comes to search engines your greatest returns will come from being ranked in the top 5 of search engine results for a major keyword. Having one site that is ranked say 3rd is better than 3 sites that are ranked 14th, 18th and 27th for various keywords and pages within your site.

In addition to trying to have your inbound links all link to the same address or page (often the homepage) with a somewhat similar phrase it is important to realize that your support for your homepage will also be dispersed throughout your site as long as you sub-sections are linked from your main page, underlining the importance of a good navigation system and potentially sitemap. What is meant by this is say all your inbound links are pointing to one particular page of your site (your homepage) with a fairly consistent keyword or phrase used to link your site you will find that the benefits of doing this will disperse through your whole site. For example having your homepage have a Google PR of 5 will often mean that for the majority of your sub-sections, like the Waldo’s Picture Gallery, will see the benefits of being linked by this quite well supported page and you will probably find that sub-sections will receive a Google PR of 3 or 4 as a result of being linked by such a supported site. This same principle applies when visitors search for say ‘World of Warcraft’ and get to ‘Waldo’s World of Warcraft’ when they get there they will see that Waldo’s site may actually offer a great number of sections for which they didn’t search yet may still visit and find interesting, so by having one main and popular page the sub-sections will in turn see the benefits of that popularity. So with this noted it is important to that be focused ad specific about the types of keywords and pages you are targeting/marketing and in being consistent you should see an improvement in all the sections of your site, not just the ones that are the focal point of your search engine optimization.

Having developed a quality and useful site now allows your site to now be recognized by other site owners as a source of good information or offering a quality service. This is one of the most important stages of developing a popular site, receiving support (inbound links) from other websites. The internet is a big network of sites, however it is unrealistic for one site to have all the information anyone could ever want on one site, and as such this has resulted in the common practice of linking other sites that contain the relevant information that your own site lacks that the visitors of your site might find useful. Links are important for a number of reasons, firstly and most importantly they are a great source of traffic itself, and much of any site’s traffic will come from links from other sites or from other pages within your actual site, which makes an effective and efficient navigation system within your site just as important. However of late inbound links have received much more attention for their ability to affect your Google PageRank, one element in the algorithm that is believe to be quite significant in a site’s position within Google search results. As such people have begun to place a significant value on receiving inbound links from other websites, and in many cases have placed much more focus on improving their Google PageRanks (PR) rather than improving their actual sites. Whilst a good Google PR is preferable I would suggest that there are many more valuable things that could and should be done to a site prior to focusing to heavily on Google PR.

Google PR is essentially a system where by Google sees inbound links from one site to another as a vote for the value of that site. For example if Tony’s Tonka Truck fan site links the official Tonka Truck site that is Tony saying that he recommends the site as it will be source of valuable information. So when site A links site B, it tells Google that A recommends B. Now if A, C, D and E all give a link to site B that tells Google that many sites see site B as a valuable site and as such Google will give site B a higher Google ranking. Now in addition to the number of sites that support your site the significance of the inbound link is also important, meaning that a site that is 2 months old and has very little inbound links itself, usually meaning a low Google PR, may give your site its recommendation with a link from its site, but that link or recommendation won’t be worth nearly as much as a link from a well established site in the industry that has hundreds and thousands of inbounds links and has been established for years. So basically to improve your own Google PR you want to receive as many inbound links from as many sites that are of the highest quality as possible that already have established and significant Google PR.

Official Google Explanation of Page Rank
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However as I have mentioned above many webmasters are aware of this and gaining inbound links from other sites is sometimes difficult. Often offering link exchanges results in small gains for both parties, but by far a better way of improving your Google PR is through having a quality site that many website owners are happy to link your site regardless of a return link due to your site being of use to the site owner as a result of the good quality content or unique information it offers.