Using Links from other websites to help your natural search results

 "Links" This is the art of getting other websites to hyperlink to your website. These hyperlinks can be either text links or banners (clickable images). Straight forward text links are best. For example, if you click on the following simple hyperlink marquee hire our own home page will appear in a new window or click marquees and our marquees page will appear in a new window. This is a simple form of self advertising.

Notice with the example above that the hyperlink text is "marquee hire" and "marquees" not the website name "http://www.marquee-hire.info" or "http://www.marquee-hire.info/marquees.htm". What we are doing here is using important keywords as the hyperlink text. This hyperlink text is called 'Anchor text'.

Good Links - An Example Business

Going back to our example of a Winchester based marquee company, good anchor link text might be "Marquee hire Winchester" or "Marquees Winchester" or "Marquees for hire in Winchester" - exactly the same as the important keywords.

However, you should not have all your text links or a large proportion of your text links with the same anchor text as you may run the risk of being banned or filtered in the search results. We would recommend a good mix of anchor text, including straight forward URL links (www.company.co.uk) and some with just your business name - but what percentages are optimum? Well, lets assume your business is called John Smith Events Ltd and you are mainly a marquee company based in Winchester. A good mix of anchor text for your links might be as follows:

20% "John Smith Events Ltd" (You still need searchers to find your business who already know your company name)

25% "Marquee Hire Winchester"

25% "Winchester Marquees"

10% "Marquee Hire Hampshire from John Smith Events"

10% "John Smith Events - Hampshire Marquees"

10% www.johnsmithevents.co.uk (This is good to vary your text)

Now please bear in mind this is only an example, but following the advice above would produce excellent results.

Why are links important? Most search (se) engines use links to partly rank your website in the search results listings. Not only is the link itself important, but the Anchor Text associated with that link helps the engine to determine what the subject of page being linked to is all about. (Hold your cursor over the logo on the right to see the Anchor Text for this image).

It is fair to say that all search (se) engines use links to help determine the importance of the website that is being linked to.

How many links do I need to get on page one of the natural search results?

This depends on how competitive the search term is. In our example of the Winchester based marquee business you may only need 15 - 25 links. In a more competitive area like Surrey, Yorkshire or London you may need 50 - 200 to obtain the same results and for page one for national searches of highly competitive terms like "Marquees" or "Marquee Hire" you may need 400 - 1,000 links and a lot of patience! As with all SEO (search engine optimisation) you should always allow at least 6 months for noticeable improvements and over a year for highly difficult SEO projects.

Time is also one of the most important factors

There are billions of web pages on the net, yours is just another which has to wait it's turn. Don't take it personally when nothing appears to happen and don't expect immediate results. We see this all the time "I have a fantastic website - much better than my competitors" - yes, but you are dealing with completely automated software (search engine robots) and they have pre-determined parameters and they can't see your nice photographs or appreciate that you have invested 10 times more money on kit than your competitor down the road.

In conclusion, the proper use of keywords within your website and the anchor text of links to your website will do wonders for your marquee advertising in the search results. (Needless to say, we use anchor text links here at marquee-hire.info for all links). The only way to top ten listings is good site optimisation and lots of quality links.

To make things slightly more complicated the different engines use differing methods to determine how well your site will do....