Search Engine Submission Canada

Link Optimisation is a technique of Optimising the Keywords used within anchor text, alt and title tags to point towards related content.

So how is this different from Website Optimisation or Web Page Optimisation?

There are two forms of Link Optimisation, the first is "on site" the second is "off site".

On site link Optimisation is pointing your <href`s> using related keywords, for example if you use href="index.html" and Home to point back to your home page throughout your site, this would be an example of badly optimised link whereas pointing your hyperlink using this one as an example;

href="http://www.website-by-design.co.uk and a title tag like title="Custom Website Design Sunderland Newcastle and Middlesbrough" then follow this up using the keywords you want to target within the anchor like Custom Website Design Sunderland Newcastle and Middlesbrough

Would be an example of an Optimised link.

Since October 2004 as part of the DDA (Disability Discrimiation Act) in the UK there are basic accessibility issues you need to consider when coding your HTML.

One of the issues is providing alternative text, for text based or text-to-speech browsers Using title tags (title="") within your hyperlinks or alternative text (Alt="") within your image (img="") tags.

Why?

The browsers used by people with disabilities may not have the same features enabled within Firefox, Explorer, Netscape or whatever browser you are using to navigate the internet. Ideally you should get hold of a copy of a text based browser or at least test your designs using websites such as AnyBrowser.org.

Accessibility has everything to do with Optimisation, why would you disregard such a large community when it only takes seconds to optimise and design for as many visitors to your site as is possible.

With this in mind you will find you not only start to address these issues but you put into practice link optimisation every time you create a hyperlink to related content.

Offsite Link Optimisation

Off site link Optimisation is applied again using several methods i.e Link Requests, Directories, Search Engine Submission, Forums....etc

You get the idea and you have probably used all of these methods already. So how do you optimise your links off site?

If you have read my earlier articles about Web Page Optimisation or WebSite Optimisation you will be familiar in utilising your keywords to present your content at it`s optimum, Off site link optimisation is no different, at every opportunity where you can submit a URL or you can post a comment on a blog, use your keywords within your Link to point back to your website or your related content.

Read More about Website Optimisation
About the Author

Dean Cruddace is the Founder and Lead Web Designer for Website By Design