Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

A few years ago when I began doing search marketing, I thought you could create a website with a well thought out architecture and then just link between any pages in any method at all. However, in search marketing, the links are much more important than you think, so they should not be chosen arbitrarily at all.

Example Scenario:
I create a website with products all over it, let’s use kids toys for example. You have rocking horses, toy trains and model cars. If I create a link on a page for “Rocking Horse” which links to the rocking horse product page, this will tell search engines to pull up the product page when a user searches specifically for “Rocking Horse”, which is the product name. This will increase sales for this product, which will make my suppliers happy, which will make my investors happy, and so on and so forth. However, if I put the full product name “Johnny Appleseed Rocking Horse” instead of just the basic product name, I am also going to pull in people who are looking for a generic rocking horse as well as that specific brand.

So Jeff, where’s the problem? The problem arises with the company who hired you to do search marketing for them, e.g. whatever company that makes “Johnny Appleseed Rocking Horse”. If they specifically hired you to market to customers looking for the generic “rocking horse” and not off of their own brand name, it becomes a problem for you and as a result this new website could turn into a competitor to your existing client. So before you run out and develop a website for lead generation, make sure you create a list of keywords and terms to use when building your site and not just randomly picking link names or descriptions.

I have also included a few links for more information about the power of text links or to continue the debate over whether content is king or not.

What have I missed, let me know in the comments.