Two Site Linking Strategy
One site is good… Two can be even better when it comes to linking strategies.
These days every small business owner knows that they need a website even if it is only a small brochure website that makes it possible for people to look up the name of their business in a search engine. Many have ventured beyond that and established a sales type site or eCommerce site so people can make purchases online.
The good thing about these sites is that they give the business exposure on the Internet. The problem is that most online users don’t search for companies or business names. They go online looking for information, answers, advice, detailed descriptions, good ideas, how-tos and so on.
Example: Let’s take the new owner of a young kitten as an example of a typical Internet user. She is not going to search for a business or online store to find out how to feed her new kitten. She is going to search for something like “what to feed kitten” or “feeding kittens” or something along that line.
She will probably never arrive at the sales site or eCommerce site because it doesn’t give that kind of detailed information.
The solution is to set up a second website that is purely educational or informative with plenty of links to the eCommerce or sales website.
How the two site linking strategy works:
Website 1: MyCatPalace.com is an online store that sells cat food, collars, supplies, scratching posts, and so on. This site tells all about the various cat toys and special cat treats you offer, about your cat grooming service, and how to buy. If you sell products for cats online, it has an ecommerce shopping cart and online payment processing.
Website 2: AllAboutMyCat.com is an educational or informational type site. It has articles on why cats do the things they do, how to get cats to quit scratching the sofa to pieces, what to do about matted fur, common cat ailments and so on. The links to the products featured on MyCatPalace.com are smoothly worked into the various informational articles. This provides a new source of links and visitors to MyCatPalace.com. You don’t want to have too many links or links on every page. You want to have links that are really helpful to the visitors and that will interest them enough to visit your sales site.
Here’s why this linking strategy works:
Search engines give a higher rating to sites with plenty of relevent quality content for their users. MyCatPalace.com doesn’t really qualify because it is really only about what a person can buy from your store or sales site. On the other hand, AllAboutMyCat.com has articles that explains about cat behavior and the needs of cats. It uses words that people are likely to be looking for in the search engines. It solves problems that they are trying to learn more about.
As well, if AllAboutMyCat.com is a a high quality informational site about cats, it will draw plenty of related links from other websites. This adds new visitors from other websites and helps build up traffic to MyCatPalace.com even more.
The second site doesn’t have to be a fancy website with all kinds of expensive interactive features. It can be a simple informational site chock full of information. For this sort of website, blogs are an excellent choice. They are relatively easy to set up and maintain, search engines favor their content and you also get the added benefit of hooking into all of the blog related directories, blog readers and blog communities.
It’s a good idea to set up your second website under its own domain name that is more generic and related to the subject matter you will be covering. When you register the domain name, register it under a slightly different version of the name your first site is registered under or under your spouse or another family member’s name. That will help to differentiate your second site from your first site in the search engines.
Keywords:blog link popularity link strategies link swapping natural link search engine traffic web presence Website Marketing
