Page and Link Creation

Here are some tips on how to build pages and links in the best way for consistency and uniformity - and to help the site. Please think of these tips as a request - you don't have to follow them and there is no 'rule'. And don't panic if you are trying to comply but can't remember how to do it right. It's simply that this is the best way, if you can arrange it.

Page URLs
The page URL or address is its name on the Internet. It should take the form of:

freeware-in-new-york.htm

You can see that:

- there is no upper case even when the word is normally capitalized
- there are no spaces between the words
- spaces are filled with hyphens
- no underscores are used
- there is an .htm extension

Please do it like this if you can remember - all pages need to look like this and there are no exceptions.

Links
Links always help a site to become more successful because search engines see a site with more links as being more valued by Internet users. We are talking about 'backlinks' of course, here: the hyperlinks to our site that appear on other sites (not menu links etc on our own site).

There is now, and always has been, a massive debate about this measurement system, ever since Google introduced the concept. Clearly, it has produced the best search results available, but also it is extremely vulnerable to spammers (and has itself created a monster spam industry), so although it also means the SEs have to devote huge resources to policing it, users like the results - they vote with their feet and Google has about 80% of the market. But while it lasts - and there is nothing on the horizon that looks like replacing it - we must do as everyone else does -- get more links.

There's a good way and many poor ways to go about this. It's fairly simple:

1. Make sure your links are canonical. That means they should only go to one address, not a bunch of variations on your address. And the tiniest, most minute variation makes an URL entirely different.

2. Use your preferred anchor text, not a random phrase or just your URL.

3. If you want a link, then ensure you get it - use the full URL with all the trimmings, eg http://www..... at the start.

These 3 simple points are vitally important. Point one tells us that we should only use one address, and that any change, however small, dilutes the effect. So -

http://www.techsupportalert.com
http://www.techsupportalert.com/
http://techsupportalert.com
http://techsupportalert.com/
http://www.techsupportalert.com/index.php

...are all different addresses (even though they all go to the same place), and we should ONLY USE THE FIRST ONE. There are actually about 18 of these variations just for a website's front page :)

Point 2 refers to exactly how we link. There are umpteen ways of doing this but the most successful of all is to use anchor text. That means to use a word or phrase that you want to be found for, and to hyperlink that text to your page. In our case we want to be found for the word 'freeware', so it helps us a lot if the anchor text is: freeware. No more, no less.

As an example of how powerful an anchor text link is, google 'click here'. You'll find that the top page for that term, against 1.3 billion competing pages (and that's a lot, kids), is Adobe's Acrobat download page. It's because they have millions of links from other sites, pointing at that page, using the anchor text of 'click here'.

And the most amazing thing is that despite beating an almost incalculable number of other pages and all the biggest sites on the Net -- THE TEXT 'CLICK HERE' DOES NOT EVEN APPEAR ON THEIR PAGE.

Think about the implications of that, OK?

It means with enough linkweight, with an anchor of your desired text -- you don't even have to have anything about that on your site at all. Get it?

It means that link anchors are actually more important than your site content - crazy but true, folks. And here's our perfect backlink format: freeware

No more, no less. Just 'freeware'. Nothing else.

This is how our link should appear on another website. It's linked to our site's front page, ie
http :// www .techsupportalert.com [there are a couple of spaces in that so that the cms doesn't create a link on it], but it is actually more effective if it links to an inside page. Where it links to is not nearly so important as the anchor text, 'freeware'. This is because we are trying to improve our search results position for the word 'freeware'.

Point 3 means that if you just write techsupportalert.com or sometimes even www.techsupportalert.com, then you may not get the link properly established - it depends on circumstances. But if you go the whole nine yards with http://www.techsupportalert.com -- it always does the trick.