Link tips for website optimisation

[www.optimalwebsite.co.uk]

We get asked a lot for help on how to link best for traffic. I've cut and paste this from our website. There are 3 types:

Trade associations. Adding these to your homepage give you a reputable and established feel.

Existing customers. A page of the site should be dedicated to a portfolio of recent clients. Clients you worked with for your previous employer can be included. If you say nice things about them, then they'll probably link back.

Supplementary products/services. A page is dedicated to the providing of auxiliary services. For example, if you sell salt you might link to companies selling pepper or vinegar. Do not link to your competitor's sites. Ask yourself what else a visitor might be interested in.

Kind regards,



Joel Harper

[A.N.Onym]

Ahem. Linking to external sites does not yield noticeable amounts of traffic, you know.

External links may be helpful to help the search engines determine the topic and the neighbourhood of your website.

By the way, using clients from a previous employer is not ethically correct, because they belong to the employer. Unless the clients themselves want to work with you only - in that case, you don't need to woe them.

[www.optimalwebsite.co.uk]

Hi Onym,

I'm the other way round, when I deal with a company I deal with the guy at the other end of the phone that sold me the product and who I expect to provide the service. For me, that person is the company, I'm his client, not his shareholders. You'd need to word it carefully of course...

Warm regards,


Joel

[fisicx]

Trade Association links mean nothing unless you are a member of that organization. But unless they link to you there is zero SOE value in the link.

You may recall the plethora of 'web awards' folks plastered all over their sites - they became self defeating in the end since everybody had them. Same with trade associations - unless their is a benefit for the customer they will do nothing for the site.

What you need are inbound links from respectable sites, they're the best sort of links to have.

[A.N.Onym]

optimal, you are chasing a squirrel there.
First of all, you can't buy hundreds of products and write hundreds of reviews. If you do, that's worth a site in itself.
Secondly, there are things like unique quality content and site usability that you can spend your time on.

Quality content gets linked to, you just need to work hard and promote it a bit.

[yorganic]

Hi Joel, Thanks for the info but simply cutting and pasting from your web site is really not that useful and noting from the comments you supplied on another forum yesterday can I flag this guy up to the moderators as a spam merchant.

[www.optimalwebsite.co.uk]

Another angry SEO company annoyed because I've put the tools of the trade online....

A user sent me this email yesterday:

Hey Joel, your website's first page has everything someone starting up needs to know! Nice one.
Wish someone had told me all that 3 years ago instead of finding it out as I went along. Nice useful site there.

I don't see why we shouldn't allow small businesses to have a crack at SEO themselves if they cant afford to hire a professional firm.

Kind regards,


Joel Harper

[A.N.Onym]

At any rate, Joel, even if you posted it from your website, the information isn't as useful as 101 link building tips.

[yorganic]

Originally Posted by www.optimalwebsite.co.uk

Another angry SEO company annoyed because I've put the tools of the trade online....

Not at all, it's just that the information you posted yesterday on the other forum to which I refer was plain old incorrect and, in my view a feeble attempt at spamming a forum.

Carl