Using KW research to diversify link profiles

Your guide to creating natural link profiles

Using your keyword research when crafting link profiles is extremely important for both internal and external tagging. Crafting link profiles is all about related diversity. What I mean by that is we want to have a diversified link text collection that is made of up related phrasings and creates a ‘theme’ in the eyes of a search engine.

A full featured link profile for a given page or website should be diverse in links texts as well as timing of the links. Search engines look for anomalies in these areas and can discount or devalue your links if it believes them to be artificially crafted. I would say the thresholds are likely reasonably high (for major link spammers) but it is still an area of interest and potentially concern.

Beyond the fact that there is the potential for running afoul of the search engines, creating diversity and themes will ultimately create a stronger link profiles and naturally create long-tail traffic opportunities as well.

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Factors affecting link text diversity

Page naming and titles; often people will link to your content by the title of the page in question. I like to try and encourage diversity by not only a targeted page name, but a secondary title as well which often will also be used by those linking to the content. The main idea is that we still have the core target associated with the content but a higher probability of diverse, related links pointing to the page. If using search engine friendly URLs, the actual page name becomes even more important.

Internal Linking; as any good SEO knows, the power of internal linking can be considerable. This is when we link internally on a site from one page to another. Once again, by charting your link texts we can look for opportunities for using related terms that maintain the theme, but give diversity. We don’t need to actually use the target term with the internal linking if we already have enough external links using that text. What you should do is utilize semantically related phrasings as link text on the internal linking to build around the core term.

Foundational Link building; if you participate in foundational stuff such as reciprocal link programs, directory submissions and article marketing; don’t be lazy. If you simply outsource this to company X over in India it is likely you’ve not caught the right boat. You should always consider your own manual submission as this allows for unique titles and descriptions for each listing.

Yes, it is certainly more work doing it this way, but it IS the correct way to go about foundational link building. Having the exact same anchor text, or 2 or 3, across all of these areas is simply a bad idea and begging for devaluation of said links.

Enter the keyword research

Ok, now let’s look at some basic KW research for the term ‘lighting’; which might get us a list such as this (note – I haven’t done formal research, just pulled these real quick);

Core terms (let’s say these are the main money terms)

Secondary (terms we’re targeting as second tier)

Supporting terms (terms indirectly targeted and tracked)

Once you have done some link building around the core and secondary terms we’ll want to look at some related terms which we can use potentially for page names, content titles as well as internal and outbound links (as well as inbound); which could include items such as -

You want to now take your list and isolate some likely candidates for use in article marketing and other link building campaigns. We would also use our lists for creating content and associated page names and titles. Obviously which ones we use and what pages they are targeted to depends on the situation. The main thing to understand is that a diverse, but related link profile is far more effective and natural in appearance.

Accordingly we might isolate the following for a web page targeted for; ‘indoor lighting’

Utilizing this list we can now craft link texts for;

1. Article Marketing
2. Internal links
3. Outbound links
4. Directory submissions
5. Reciprocal links
6. Forum signatures
7. Press releases
8. Social Media Submissions and profiles

Be sure to chart which terms you intend to use in which locations and track accordingly. The further the related term is from the core target, the less we would want to use it. Research the perceived potential value from each link location and ensure the stronger phrases get better locales. The same for onsite internal linking; use tighter targeting on strong pages and looser internal targeting on weaker pages.

Going Natural

The main point here is to begin understanding the role that your keyword research can play as far as designating and assigning related link texts. You should craft a natural, broad targeted, link profile as much as possible. Obviously we want the greater number of links to be utilizing the core term (say 60-70%) – but building out the rest with related terms will ultimately do far more in the long run. Not only will this strengthen the core terms, but create many functional long-tail opportunities as well.

If you work with a team of optimizers it is essential that the link builders and keyword researchers work closely to get the most bang for the buck out of the program.

Creating a natural link profile ensures less risk of links being devalued or discounted altogether while building themes which strengthen your core targets. We can’t control each and every link text pointing to us but we can certainly ensure our efforts bring some order to the chaos.

More related reading;

Here on the trail

Link builders guide to historical ranking factors
Do link spammers leave footprints?
Hooked on Link Baiting

Elsewhere

Creating a natural link profile - Jennifer Slegg
Get the anchor text you want - SEOmoz
Link analysis done right - SEO theory
the Role of outbound links - SEOmoz
All about natural link profiles - Yoast
Link profile building tips - Brian Turner
Balancing your link profile - Van SEO Design
Explaining link theory to laypeople - SEOpscenter
Using Social Profiles to your advantage - SEO Scoop
Big round up of link building tools - Search Engine Land