Many webmasters fall into the trap of trying to build as many links as they can. A common way to do this is to search for links or add url, or similar, together with the keyword or keyphrase that you want a link from (or want to exchange links with).

I describe this as a trap because what you can easily end up with is a collection of inbound links that give you no traffic, no search engine value, and might even lower your search engine rankings.

Now this is not really a webmaster hosting issue, and I will cover it in more detail on my web management site, but webmasters do need to be aware of the potential risks.

Before I talk about those risks, I must explain why I am writing about hosting links today. The reasons are very important for any business web host.

Last week I described the simple process of installing HitTail code. Though there are many methods for tracking how visitors find your website (known as referrers), HitTail is the best. It automatically builds and analyzes a referrer database. Normally, you would have to maintain your own logs, compare them with your site content and produce a report of suggested topics for new articles (or new keywords that suit existing articles).

HitTail produces this list for you, saving you massive amounts of time. If you are working on your own site, just add more content around the suggested phrases, or amend existing content to add more keywords. If you are managing the site for a client or employer, just pass the list on, and earn yourself a raise.

HitTail suggested I needed some content about hosting links. So here it is.

If you are building links through directories and similar sites, avoid the ones with low page rank. The easiest way to do this is to install SEO for Firefox, which shows the page rank for Google and Yahoo search engine results. If you are not using FireFox, I highly recommend that you use it. You can still use your existing browser after you install it.

The best way to add links is through forming relationships with other quality sites in a related subject. You should have a linking policy on your site, to guide people who want to link to you, and inform them how you link to other sites.

Do not build links pages – build quality content where external links add value by reinforcing, explaining, or extending the points you make.

If you want to know more about hosting links, add your comments below or email me using my Contact Page.

I discuss the merits, or otherwise, of SEO on my web business site. Keywords for SEO are generally recognized as being unimportant, to the extent that free WordPress.com sites do not have them. However, there is an alternative, as I describe in my free WordPress.com tag feed page. I think tagging is still important.

Tagging serves a number of purposes, definitely in order of importance:

1. Helps visitors find related content.
2. Makes me focus on what is important in the post or page.
3. Tells search engines what the article is about.

example upgrade-wordpress
All aspects of WordPress can be upgraded by tweaking the code. This is not a significant part of this site about business web hosting, but it is an important one. I try to find ready made extras for my WordPress Hosting setup, but if they do not quite do what I want, I am happy to apply one or two code tweaks to upgrade them.

WordPress upgrades are not important enough to warrant a category, but they are quite closely related to business web hosting. They will crop up across categories, and I might even do a post that is focused just on upgrading WordPress. My answer is to tag them.

The secret to choosing good tags is to focus on what visitors are looking for. They should complement and not duplicate categories. I’ll write more on technical tools to help choosing tags later, to link in to the advice on my web business management site.

My chosen WordPress plug-in for managing tags is UTW. I use it in conjunction with some other plug-ins to help focus every article on being accessible to visitors – a process I’ve heard referred to as Visitor Optimization. I call it looking after your customers – a maxim that’s served many a shrewd business owner for centuries.

The related plug-ins are:

Google Sitemap Generator

Not directly related to WordPress tags, but very important for building sitemaps (and not just for Google). I use the extra features of version 3 with no problems, despite it being beta software. Included here as it links with…

Tag Warrior – Sitemap link

… this plug-in which adds tags index pages to your sitemap.

All in One SEO Pack

A new one for me, recommended by many. It should link titles and UTW, but that means, it aint all in one.

SEO Title Tag

Now this takes me back to a pre-WordPress life. Good page titles to get attention separate from good article headlines to maintain interest. I often tried to get round this with a headline starting the post, but this is better. My only beef is the confusion with the tag word. I keep tags for in-article keywords, usually duplicated in meta-keywords. Meta-titles and meta-descriptions adequately describe the header parts of an html page.

I’ll write more in-depth articles on each of these in future. The technical part of this is quite simple, but I think it warrants further explanation.

One final point that relates strongly to tags, and is vital to every website. You need HitTail. The HitTail code can go anywhere in the body – I put it in footer.php just before </body>. There is also a plugin on the HitTail site and one called TailHitter – I’ll try this soon to avoid problems when changing themes.