I was searching the Internet the other day, looking for some good quality guidance on how to link effectively, and I found these quick tips which I have found really useful.

Building links is one of the most important if not THE most important Off-Page factor in Search Engine Optimisation. New people to Search Engine Marketing usually get this point but fail to grab the most important aspect of it being the fact that you do not want just any links linking to your site, it has to be a quality, well themed link. Some builders just build link based on PR, so they end up having links from a page with good PR but where the link contents has absolutely nothing to do with their website or sometime even worst, you have a Viagra link sitting side by side with a link to a cloth manufacturer and a web hosting link side by site with gambling links.  The list below contains ten tips of what to look for on a page that is linking to you.

1. Ensure the page your link is placed has a direct link from the homepage of the site, if the page does not have a PageRank.
2.  Avoid getting link from a page called ‘link’. Best name for a link page will be the name of your contents, for example, if you are a web hosting company, a page called web-hosting.html is a good page.
3.  Avoid over crowded link pages.  If the link page already has more than twenty links on it, avoid placing your link there. Ideally, fewer than ten links is the best.
4.  Avoid link page with all sorts of links, a themed link page is the best.
5.  Your link should be placed with your desired anchor text, a link with just your site url is not very good.
6.  Ideally some text relating to your link should precede it and after your link there should be some text relating to your link.
7.  Direct text link will benefit your site better in terms of SEO thank link with nofollow tag added to it
8.  Links placed on plain HTML, PHP or ASP page will benefit your site more thank link redirected to your site with JavaScript.
9.  Link placed above the fold on a web page is more valuable than links below the fold.
10. The best place to get a link from is the index page of a site, on the top half of the page.

If you want to view other useful tips on search marketing log onto this Temi blog. Its full of really useful tips and comments.

Your can discuss Search Engine Optimisation and other aspects of Search Engine Marketing at UK Webmaster Forum

About Chris Norton

Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.