Link Diversity

The Importance Of Link Diversity in Internet Marketing

Think of your internet marketing plan in the same way that you think about your investment portfolio. After all, it is an investment that could result in quite a bit of income for your business. Internet marketing works a lot like stocks, bank accounts, and even your Roth IRA. The more money that you invested, the larger the rewards. But with internet marketing, your currency is not dollar bills and your hard earned pay check, it's links. A link is the legal tender of the internet and some links are worth the price of gold while others only carry the weight of a few pennies.

Search engines function on the premise that if you have a web site that offers valuable content, a really good product, or have an opinion worth listening to, other web sites will provide a link to your web site as a resource. The more links you have coming to your web site, the more valuable and popular search engines believe that your site is. In the end, search engines rank web sites by popularity. The more links you have, the more popular your site is, and the higher you rank. The site with the most amount of links wins.

Well, not entirely because not all links have equal value. One link from a very large site like CNN, Yahoo, or ESPN will have ten thousand times the value of a link from your grandmothers quilting Blog. The better the web site that links to your site, the more power and popularity search engines will give you. A lot of links is good, but a lot of links from already popular sites is even better. Typically, the easier it is to gain a link, the less value that link has. It is very easy to obtain links pointing to your site from friends Facebook pages, by commenting on Blog posts, or by submitting your site to free places or directories that will add a link back to your site. But to gain a link from a powerful site, you have to have something of real value worth linking to. I mean REAL VALUE... not a contest, not signing up for a newsletter, not a 10% off deal... something news worthy warranting attention and traffic.

Because links on popular high traffic sites are so hard to come by, most web sites need to opt for a large number of links from smaller sites for high ranking. This is a great way to build popularity and build the value of your site. Search engines are smart and are constantly changing the value that they give to links. Some links will start off having a lot of value but over times may lose their significance and power. Other links you build may grow in importance as others fall.

This same rising and falling in value of assets is again similar to an investment portfolio. Like investments where it is wise to diversify your portfolio to help protect against an entire portfolio falling at once, the same holds true for your link portfolio. In the world of internet marketing this means putting your links on various platforms. Current common platforms to acquire links from could be Web 2.0 properties, social bookmarking, blog posting, social media web sites, engaging in forum or message board discussions, or trading links with other sites. There are hundreds of ways to acquire links, beyond the aforementioned, and it is important to build your web presence by having your site appear in as many places as possible. Building links on only one platform or being heavy in one type of link building looks unnatural to search engines. The more natural and diverse your links appear, the better the longevity and impact of your campaign. Diversity in your link building campaign is crucial to creating long term site popularity and value.

Best of luck with your marketing!

Dan
2TheTopMarketing