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Website structure continued

Navigation / Internal Linking

It is important that all of your website pages are thoroughly linked together. How you link them together can also have an influence on ranking. In general it is better to use text links links over graphic button/image links. The reason being that you can include a keyword in the link text (aka anchor text). It is no coincidence that my navigation to the left is all done with text links. Adding a keyword in the link text provides a ranking boost for the linked page amongst many search engines, especially Google. If however you do use graphic images for your navigation be sure it is not done with an image map without some other navigation present. Many search engines can not follow the links in image maps. It is also a good idea to use the Alt attribute on images which is believed to add a ranking boost for some search engines. You should not just use the Alt attribute to stuff in keywords but make the text within match the image and destination if it is a link.

An example of the alt attribute in action can be seen by hovering your mouse over the Abakus logo in the top left corner of your screen. "ABAKUS Internet Marketing Home" has been entered in the alt attribute. The exact code below...

More on the use of the alt attribute and what is known as the title attribute in the coding pages.

As mentioned in the design pages, it is important to be aware that some designs make it difficult for a search engine spider to follow internal links and index your pages. If you truly must use image maps in your main navigation, be sure to give the spiders something else to find and follow just in case. A good example for this might be something like the links in the footer on this page. In general make it as easy as possible for a search engine to find your pages with thorough linkage and wherever possible use text links with a keyword in the link text. Your most important pages should be linked from all your internal pages. Try to keep the clicks to any web page as low as possible. If you have hundreds of pages which makes it impractical to list them all from your home page, build a site map page which does list all / your most important other pages and place the site map it in your root directory. This ensures you are never more than two clicks away from any page. Site maps are not used enough by webmasters and can really help your site getting indexed.

External (outbound) Linking

Be careful not to have too many external links on your pages. Google recommends no more than 100. If your site is just links (no descriptions) you may be flagged as a link farm and penalized/ignored by some search engines. There is also a more advanced issue which involves the draining of Google PageRank (tm). In my experience it is rare to find a site consisting of just links making it into the top 10. I personally would never put more than 6 outbound links on any one page unless it was a directory or 'other resources' page.

Inbound Links (Link popularity)

Over the past year or two, some search engines have included in their main algorithm, or have included as a separate algorithm (PageRank in Googles case), a means of checking the number of incoming links to a given web page (aka link popularity). The theory being, the more incoming links your site has then the more likely it is that your site has content of value and therefore the more inbound links the more a site must be of worth and if linked with the same theme keywords the more relevant it must be to those pages that have few links. This is VERY important nowadays. Obtaining links from similarly related websites should be a major goal.

In the case of the Google PageRank algorithm for example, it is however not just the quantity of links that point to your website, but also the quality. Quality can be measured in essentially 3 ways.

1. Is the website that is giving you a link of the same theme and keyword relevance as your own pages. 2. How popular is the site which is giving you the link (how many links does that site have pointing to it, the linking sites own Google PageRank).
3. How many other outbound links are on the page from where you have been linked from (dilution of PageRank inheritance).

For example, a popular website which has many quality links pointing to it has recently linked to your site from it's home page. This page has a total of 3 other outbound links. This is ideal for your site, especially if the link is a text link where the link text (anchor text) is a keyword relevant to your page.

On the other hand, a site which itself has few incoming links and has an "other resources" page in which a link to your site is one of over 20 others, then you can not expect much of a ranking boost, or in Googles case, much of a boost in PageRank. Having said that, it won't harm your site either. Webmasters in our experience are not making enough effort to obtain quality inbound links; either through exchanging; or just asking webmasters of similarly themed websites for a link. If you have a site with quality useful content, a webmaster will be more willing to link to you than if all you have is a 2 page front window and link list site. Again, the importance of quality content can help your ranking.

Links from major web directories such as DMOZ (ODP) boost your general link popularity and are particularly valued with the Google search engine.

In summary, make sure you actively seek links from quality sites, starting off with the major web directories, but do not waste your time with link lists/farms or FFA'S (Free For Alls) which invariably just mean you will receive more spam in your post box than normal or in the case of link farms get your site penalized for belonging to what is known as a bad neighborhood. An idea by the way is to go to your favorite search engine and type in the following to help find potential sites to exchange/request a link or submit to.

keyword +add url
keyword +submit
keyword +websites
keyword +resources
keyword +directory
keyword +list
.
.
In short, obtain links from quality sites and wherever possible get the link text to contain at least one of your keywords. If your website offers something unique or contains excellent content, it will generate link popularity naturally. Websites with little useful content have to work much harder.