Text Links Guide

This guide was written by Michael Wong, who has been optimizing web sites since 1998. I wrote one of the earliest SEO books way back in 2002, which has gone on to sell over 2,000 copies. So you can be sure you're getting great text link building advice. Don't forget to bookmark the site for future reference.

Text Links

• What are text links?
• What do text links have to do with search engines?
• How do text links improve search engine rankings?
• How do I get people to link to my web site?
• What is link traffic?

Anchor Text

• What is anchor text?
• Should I vary the anchor text?
• Should I include misspellings in my anchor text?
• Britney Spears Spelling Correction

Image Links

• What are image links?
• What is "Alt Text"?
• What are image maps?
• Should I stay away from using image maps?

PageRank

• What is PageRank?
• Are all pages in a website given the same PageRank?
• How do I check my website's PageRank?
• How do I increase a webpage's PageRank?
• Can I buy PageRank?
• What type of links increase PageRank?
• What type of links don't increase PageRank?
• What is the attribute?
• What is PageRank leakage?
• Should I use the to preserve PageRank?
• Are there links that can actually decrease PageRank?

Link Popularity

• What is link popularity?
• What is link quality?
• What is link relevancy?
• What is link reputation?
• How do I check my website's link popularity?
• Why do Google, Yahoo and MSN backlink stats vary so much?
• How do I increase link popularity?
• Should I get deep links to subpages?
• What are authority pages?
• What type of links don't increase link popularity?

Sitemaps

• What are sitemaps?
• What are HTML sitemaps?
• What are XML sitemaps?
• What is Google Sitemaps?
• Which sitemap formats does Google support?
• What is a sitemap generator?
• Can you recommend a sitemap generator?
• How do I validate my Google sitemap?
• How do I submit a sitemap to Google Sitemaps?
• What are text sitemaps?
• How do I submit a sitemap to Yahoo?
• Which sitemap formats does Yahoo! support?
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Sitemaps

• ...Sitemaps continued
• How do I submit a sitemap to MSN?
• Do sitemaps guarantee my webpages will be included in a search engine?
• Do sitemaps improve search engine rankings?
• Does the position of a URL in a Sitemap influence its use?
• Do I need to remove session IDs from URLs?
• Should I include the frameset URLs or the URLs of the frame contents?

Linkbait

• What is linkbait?
• Is linkbait just about attracting links?

Link Seeding

• What is link seeding?
• Where can I seed links?
• What is link spam?

Link Exchange

• What is link exchange?
• Should I exchange links with other websites?
• What type of websites should I exchange links with?
• What type of websites should I avoid exchanging links with?
• How do I find websites to exchange links with?
• Can my competitor harm my Google rankings by pointing thousands of links to my site, from a penalized or banned site?
• How do I know whether link exchange partners are still linking to my website?
• What are one way links?

Sponsored Links

• What are Sponsored Links?
• Do Sponsored Links increase PageRank?
• Which websites offer Sponsored Links?

Affiliate Links

• What are affiliate links?
• Do affiliate links increase PageRank?

Link Brokers

• What are link brokers?
• Should I buy text links via link brokers?
• Is it better to buy text links that are displayed on one page (usually the homepage) or across an entire site?
• Is Text Link Ads a reputable link broker?

Natural Linking

• What is natural linking?
• What is artificial linking?
• What are link triangles?
• Is there any difference between linking virtually hosted domains and domains on dedicated IP addresses?
• Should I link to the www or non-www version of my domain?

Broken Links

• What are broken links?
• What is linkrot?
• How often should I check for broken links?
• What are the most popular broken links testing software?