Link Building - The Correct Way
The eternal question that has puzzled man for centuries. Sub-domains vs. sub-directories, which are better for building link popularity?
Ok not quite, however do you want the search engines to really fall in LOVE with your website? This is easy. You’ve just got to become the online “authority figure” in your industry!
How do you do that, you may ask? Easy. Just build a large website filled with lots of content-rich pages your potential audience will want to link to from their own websites, blogs, and dont forget the social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
You probably know by now Google and other search engines work. They work like a popularity contest. The more links pointing to your website from complementary websites, the better!
Those links are like votes on “X- Factor” judger. They give the search engines an indication your site is a valuable original resource in your particular field or market, and will help you propel your site to the top of the search engine listings for your particular keywords.
Note the use of the word “original.” We mean new cutting edge information, not just only recycled content scraped from other people’s websites.
Best way to add these content-rich pages to your site?
You have two options which I’m going to tell you about in just a moment…but first, some basic Internet terms (which you might already be familiar with).
- “URL” stands for “uniform resource locator,” which is just a nerdy way of saying, “web address.” For example, the URL for our main website is http://www.weycrest.co.uk.
(URL is different to domain name as it includes all the other techy stuff such as `http://` and `www`)
Okay, let’s say the URL for your sales site is http://www.yoursite.co.uk. When you add new pages — such as articles — to your website, you can do so in this in two ways:
- By creating a “sub-domain” URL for it, where the name of the new page comes before your main domain name, such as: http://articles.yoursite.com.
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You can create a “sub-directory,” where the name of the new page comes AFTER your main domain name for example such as: http://yoursite.co.uk/articles
Now with a sub-domain (the first example) you have the advantage of being able to put one of your top keywords before your domain name, which means you stand a far better chance of getting the search engines to index the page for that keyword.
Assuming you have strategically placed the keyword throughout your site code and content, of course.
For instance if you decide your top keyword or keyphrase is “dried poppies” then you can set up the sub-domain, http://driedpoppies.yoursite.com.
However there is a negative with this approach. Search engines tend to treat subdomains, as being entirely separate web addresses so backlinks to your main web site, won’t count towards them, tending to defeat the object.
However a sub-directory (http://yoursite.co.uk/driedpoppies) is a folder within your main site, and is therefor considered to be part of your main web site. So every link that points to a sub-directory page, count towards your main domain name.
With sub-directories, if you already have a keyword-rich domain name, you can use that keyword in your sub-directory name and in the name of the file itself, for example:
http://www.mykeyworddomainname/mykeywordsdirectory/mykeywordsfile.php
This gives your website a powerful “keyword punch!” and can help you compensate if you’ve not managed to acquire the most Keyword Friendly domain name.
This applies to any blog you start as well. You will get a huge leg up in the search engines if you set up your blog as a directory of your main site. (Such as: http://yoursite.co.uk/yourblog.)
There is one big advantage however of using subdomains, and thats in Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing on the search engines (such as Adwords). The extra keywords in the URL will be shown in bold face, punching out your advert and getting more attention.
So to conclude:
- For link-building, use a sub-directory
- pay-per-click campaigns, use a sub-domain.
But also starting thinking about how you name your website files and think in a keywordy / search engine friendly way rather than randomly.
A page called dried-poppies.html will help give the search engines web spiders more information about what your site is about rather than say page10.html