PageRank and link swapping
PageRank is Googles ranking system and one of the means Google has to rate pages is by the number & type of inbound links. Links to your site will increase your rank, however the amount it will increase it by depends on several factors: how highly rated the site is that is linking to you & how many other links that site has made. Similarly, having good internal site links from page to page will maximise your PageRank score, as will having many additional pages of good, relevant information.
Links to your site will generally increase rank by some amount, however some links from your site could cause your site to be penalised by Google. If the site you are considering linking to has a PageRank of 0, do not swap links with that site. Do not use link farms as a means of increasing inbound links, not only is this contrary to Googles stated aims when setting up the PageRank system, and therefore likely to be deliberately penalised by Google, but you cannot control what other prohibited tactics that site may use, such as hidden links, gateway pages or use of your email for other purposes (spam). Use of such tactics by a site that you link to can lead to you being penalised too – whilst they can change their site address quickly with no loss of business, you will have a site you have no doubt invested a lot of time & energy in.
Google will also rank higher, links that are relevant to your site. It uses “sophisticated text-matching techniques” (source: http://www.google.com/technology/index.html) to determine which sites are relevant to your own. In addition having relevant, useful links will naturally increase the volume of traffic to your site, independently to the search engine listings, and if found to be useful to visitors should help to naturally increase the number of inbound links into your site.
One way of starting to build up links to your site is to set up a links page. Choose carefully which sites you would like to swap links with. These sites should have good quality services and/or information, which would be relevant to your sites visitors. One way to find out what other people think may be relevant links to & from your business would be to identify a highly ranked competitor & see who links to them & who they link to. Whilst we would not suggest that you then duplicate your competitors’ links exactly, it can give you an idea of what kind of businesses to approach, perhaps in your local area, as well as identifying sites that link to several competitors & who may well be reviewing businesses such as yourself, and be happy to include you in that review.
If approached by another site & a link swap offered, we must urge a certain amount of caution, similarly if approaching another company to offer a link swap, be aware that they will also regard your approach with caution. As previously mentioned, not all links are good links, and relevant links from high quality sites are much more highly rated, so when approaching a company to offer a link swap it is important to address that request individually – do not use a stock letter. Detail why you think linking to your site would be useful to their clients & vice versa. If the site would be genuinely useful to your clients, then put the link on your site regardless of whether or not there is a reciprocal link.
If a company offering a link swap approaches you, first check that site out thoroughly. Download Googles browser add-on & check the others sites PageRank, a rank of 4 or above is good. Sites with 0 PageRank on their home page must be avoided – a 0 PageRank usually means that the site has been penalised by Google. It may also mean that the site is linked badly & the Googlebots cannot read the site to rank it. You can check Google to see if the site is listed at all. Either way the link is unlikely to prove useful to you, so only link if the sites information is excellent & truly useful to your customers. In addition, ensure the links page on the other site is connected to the rest of the site & therefore readable by Googlebots – the site map will clearly show if the links page is accessible. Check the age of the site on the “who is” information, if the site is over 6 months old then it is likely to be more highly ranked by Google, and also by dint of having already lasting six months, are more likely to be a useful link for longer. Check if the other company’s site seems honest: Are there any hidden links?; Is the information they provide accurate and in good faith?; Is there any hidden text or ‘gateway’ pages? If you are happy with the site, swap links!
It is worth checking with new customers to see what drew them to your site, if you find that one particular link or type of link proves particularly valuable to you in terms of new custom, it may be worth offering to swap content with that site as well as the swapped links, i.e. each would host one page of information about the others site/services. In effect a full-page advert – in permanent publication!
Once you have a worthwhile, informative links page you can start to build up an online network of businesses with mutual interests. This can be based on location, for example it can be useful to link to businesses in your local area if your services are location specific. If your services do not depend on location however it may be more beneficial to link to companies for other reasons. These online communities will grow naturally beyond a certain point.
Whilst you can optimise your site & encourage the right kind of links, the aim is not to ‘trick’ the search engines into giving you better listings, but to attain better listings by offering a better & more relevant site than your competitors. It is very difficult to say exactly how much one link or change to your site will improve your listing as PageRank is not a direct rating of your site – it is rated on a ‘grade curve’ so it is relatively easy to raise your sites ranking from low to good (from 2/10 to 4/10); very difficult to raise it from high, to very high (from 8/10 to 9/10); and virtually impossible to raise it from very high to highest (from 9/10 to 10/10). As we have mentioned, if you choose links based on what will be most useful to your customer & not solely on what will improve ratings, it is likely you will achieve what Google wishes to encourage with it’s PageRank system –useful, coherent networks of mutually beneficial sites.