Inbound links are good
Here’s what Google has to say about the importance of inbound links:
“Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance.”
Keyword rich links are better
Links coming from quality external websites are great news for any website. Keyword rich links - where an important keyword is included in the linking text - are even better.
In the screenshot below, you can see how Aaron Wall’s website seobook.com, links to Wordtracker’s site. The first link uses Wordtrackeras the linking text, while the second uses free keyword research guide. The second link is keyword rich (and comes from an authoritative site), so we’re very pleased to have it.
Figure 5.1: Aaron Wall’s website, seobook.com, links to two different pages on Wordtracker’s website
Skilled link builders expend a lot of effort getting links like these and there is one simple lesson that you can take from their efforts. When someone reviews or links to a new product or publication, they will often use the name of the product or publication as the live linking text. So, if those names contain an important keyword then your website will get a search engine boost for that keyword.
A link by any other name ...
Let’s take a manufacturer who publishes an ‘Office Furnishings Guide’. If the guide is useful, people will review and link to it, and in many cases they will use the name of the guide.
At the time of writing, the keyword office furnishings gets 14,800 searches/month (broad match) in the US, according to Google. However, the keyword office furniture gets more than 6 million searches/month (broad match). So, the manufacturer would have been able to target a larger keyword niche by choosing the name, ‘Office Furniture Guide’.
Figure 5.2: Office furnishings gets far fewer searches than office furniture
Choose popular keywords in your product names
The names that you choose for products you intend to sell online are important. Such names should:
(i) Fit with your overall brand and image.
(ii) Be meaningful and attractive to your target markets.
(iii) Contain popular keywords so that they boost your search engine rankings.
If you haven’t yet chosen a domain name for your website, use Wordtracker’s Keywords tool to help you find a name that contains relevant keywords.
Use keyword research when choosing product names
This also applies to how you use product names deep down in your sales pages.
Describing a product by its product code is not a good idea – WX4506 may be meaningful to your warehouse staff, but it doesn’t give a search engine any information. It would be much better to describe the product as ‘Garden Shredder WX4506’. Naming products in this way and using the names in internal linking will also bring a search engine benefit.
This area of naming products can lead to conflict between traditional brand marketers and specialized search engine marketers. Conflict between these two factions is almost bound to arise because the traditional theories and practices of brand identity and marketing were established before the internet age.
When conceptualizing and naming new products, marketers will assess the overall market, carry out customer research, and test creative ideas before taking a product forward. With the emergence of the internet, they have even more market information to add to the mix – and keyword research has an important role to play.
Use keywords in your link building campaigns
Let’s return to our office furniture example. A search for the keyword office furniture reveals that www.officefurniture.com tops Google’s listing.
Figure 5.3: Officefurniture.com is the top result on Google for a search on the keyword office furniture
A quick analysis using Wordtracker’s Link Builder tool shows that www.officefurniture.com has more than 1 million inbound links.
Figure 5.4: Link analysis for officefurniture.com
Many will contain linking text containing the keywords office furniture. These links are likely to be boosting the site’s Google ranking for that keyword.
Figure 5.5: The top sites linking to officefurniture.com according to Wordtracker’s Link Builder tool
Introducing an Effective Link Building Strategy
If you’d like to know more about the best way to build links to your site, we recommend Wordtracker Masterclass: Link Building. This 135-page e-book will walk you through the five critical stages of successful link building:
- Finding quality sites that make up your market’s online community
- Networking and befriending influencers within that community
- Creating compelling, link worthy content that is also optimized for the search engines
- Promoting your content to your online community
- Getting inbound links without having to chase them down