By Lance Trebesch, Taylor Robinson and Denise Moorehead

This installment in the occasional series Top the Web Search Lists helps you plan and develop a sound link recruitment campaign that can help your nonprofit rank high in Web search results. This process builds on the search engine optimization strategies outlined in Part 1 and Part 2.

You can dramatically improve your Web search placement. And having inbound links from well constructed, high ranking sites will boost your website’s SEO campaign more than any other factor.

What You Need to Know

Phase Three Objectives. Develop a solid link recruitment strategy that combines quality with quantity.

If we think of keywords as the means to tell search engines what your site is about, then links are the channels that tell search engines how important your site is.

A link is, of course, a direct connection that allows a web visitor to navigate between one webpage and another. A search engine deems your website as “important,” giving it a coveted higher page rank, if many links are pointing to the same website.

A great plus for nonprofit organizations: Other websites are generally more willing to provide a link to an informational or nonprofit organization, making link recruitment considerably easier.

Link Recruitment Strategies

There are three basic strategic approaches to acquiring links:

1. Get as many links as possible.
2. Get a few high quality links.
3. Have a combination of quantity and quality links.

Having a combination between quality and quantity is currently the most effective and recommended strategy. Remember, search engines do not value all links equally and neither should your organization. Having some lower quality links from directories (Part I) will give your organization a slight boost, but the real gains in ranking will be derived from the quality of incoming links.

Finding Inbound Link Partners

The questions you need to ask yourself now are:

• What information makes your website unique and friendly to link to?
• What nonprofit and for-profit websites provide similar or complementary information and would benefit from the contents of my website?

As a general rule, websites will only link to you if you give them something of real value. If you find yourself thinking, “My website has nothing to offer this group,” then do not add it to your list of potential link partners.

If you do have value to offer, take some time perusing the Internet to look for organizations –beyond the initial ones you first thought of – which focus on similar topics that would possibly link to you.

In the first 30 days, try to develop a contact list of at least the top 50 possible link partners. Look for sites with a high page rank. Page ranks range in value from 0-10 and show up on the top of your web browser. You will want to install the free page rank toolbar to acquire this tool if you do not already have it.

Using Limited Reciprocal Linking

Some organizations will want to trade links. This is called a reciprocal link. Establishing a reciprocal link entails placing a link on your site which directs visitors to a partner’s site in exchange for a link back to your own. Search engines do not value reciprocal links very highly, but a few reciprocal links will not hurt the organization as long as it contributes to a natural looking link structure.

As a general rule, reciprocal links should comprise no more than 25 percent of your total link structure (searchenginenews.com). Reciprocal links should rarely be sought out, but rather used as a fallback position in link negotiations. 

Considering Link Placement

The placement of your link on a partner’s site is often equal in importance to the quality of the partnering organization. This makes it critical to have a link placement strategy in place before you contact the organization.

A good strategy consists of a best case scenario which is a link on the homepage. However, that may not make sense to the partner or even to you. Therefore, your position might be to recommend where you feel your link is the best fit to the organization. Having your link placed in a topically relevant area of the partnering organization is critical because search engines use link placement information to determine the purpose of your organization.

Developing Anchor Text

Another factor that is pivotal to achieving a natural linking structure is establishing varied, keyword rich anchor text for each link obtained. Anchor text is the text displayed in the link on another page linking back to yours. If websites linking to your site are willing to accept suggestions for the anchor text, make sure each one is varied and includes common keywords.

Avoid links that say “click here” etc. because they will be much less valuable to your site than a specific targeted keyword that you identified in Part I of this article series.

Encouraging Voluntary Links

It is very possible that sites will want to provide a link to your site without you even having to ask, if you make sure to maintain quality content on your website. To facilitate this, provide an easy “link to us” section of your webpage where sites can sign up to link to you. Be sure to approve each link personally so that you ensure overall quality.

Additional Resources 

101 Link Building Tips to Market your Website,” How to Achieve Higher Rankings and Stay out of Google Hell Via Optimized Internal Linking and How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic – The Ultimate Guide are good sources for more information about linking. 

Phase 3 Checklist

So your next steps to improving your nonprofit’s website ranking are to:

1. Decide your link recruitment strategy.
2. Identify what valuable service/information your organization contains.
3. Develop a list of the top 50 possible links with contact information.
4. Set your link placement goals for each contact.
5. Decide what anchor text you will use for each contact.