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Advanced Link Building: Hosted Content, The Quest for the Perfect Link
By Frederick Townes (c) 2007

Ask Google (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/
answer.py?answer=35769), search engines love links. Of course,
they love some links more than others. For example, a simple
link exchange (reciprocal link) doesn't have as much value to
search engines and so, it doesn't receive the same weight as
a non-reciprocal (one-way) link – the theory being that a
one-way, in-bound link is a recommendation from a site owner to
visit this linked site. The link, itself, is testament to the
quality of the site being referred.

Article Syndication

In recent years, many sites have employed article syndication to
develop links. These site owners write (or have written)
articles of interest to a particular audience. The site owners
then offer these articles to other relevant sites free in
exchange for a link back to the originator of the content in the
"about the author" section of the article. In this way, a single
site owner can submit dozens of articles for syndication
receiving an inbound link from each article in return for the
free use of content. They can also watch other sites post the
content virally to keep their sites fresh, as well.

Sites need fresh content so many will happily display your
article and provide a link to your site. It's a tried and true
link building tactic. However, search engines are programmed to
seek out the most natural, and therefore valuable, links they
can find.

The way articles are syndicated is through sites like
goarticles.com and ezinearticles.com. The standard format for
the display of the article is: headline, article body followed
by a small blurb about the author with a link back to the
author's site. Since those links appear in the body of the page,
they appear to be more valuable in comparison to most purchased
or reciprocal links which often appear at the bottom of a page
column, or in the footer surrounded by lots of other links –
somewhat effective, but not necessarily the best way to acquire
inbound links.

In addition, syndication leads to duplication when a single
article appears on 10 sites all at the same time. This
diminishes the quality of the text and the back link to the
author's site. It's still more valuable than a plain link
exchange, but search engines are placing less emphasis on
syndicated content. So, what's a site owner to do?

Hosted Web Content

It goes by many different names: content swapping, advertorials,
pre-sell pages and hosted content – all basically the same
idea.

The way hosted content works is that you, the author, pay a site
owner to display your article. However, now, instead of the back
links to your site coming at the end of the article, you embed
those links in the body of the text surrounded by your target
keywords and actually useful content for the reader. In the
"eyes" of a search engine, this is among the highest valued back
link.

Hosted content is basically renting a page on another site with
links to your site embedded in the main body of the article. The
web site that hosts the content receives payment from the author
plus fresh content, the author gets a valuable back link and
visitors to the hosting site get useful content.

This strategy isn't new. It's simply doing what search engines
want us to do – produce content that's useful, beneficial and
appears on quality sites. Not only does a quality piece of
content receive more visibility when hosted on an authoritative
site, it also delivers increased benefit to the author, and the
page may even rank itself for target key phrases. When a major
site hosts your content, you gain from its page rank in strong
testimonials and referrals. Whether or not the site owners want
to monetize their site by allowing approved authors to post
content is the same debate as whether or not links should be
bought and sold. However, publishing high quality, unique and
useful content, rather than just creating inflated link
popularity with diminishing returns, is, in comparison, a tested
SEO tactic.

Designing a Hosted Content Page

You're paying for the placement of this content so you want it
to be good. In the eternal quest for successful link bait, you
also want the content to be ranked by search engines because it
provides real value to the reader and is hosted on an
authoritative site.

Design the hosted content page using standard SEO conventions: a
keyword savvy title, header <h1>, subheads <h2> and a keyword
density of less than 5%. Any higher and search engines may
consider the content to be "spamish" regardless of where the
content appears.

Now comes the most important part. As you write the article,
carefully place links to topically relevant pages on your own
site within the body of the article's text. These are high value
links that will improve your SEO. However, it's also important
to place your articles on sites that are topically related to
your piece (and probably already rank for related topics). The
authority of the site hosting your content, the relevance of the
site (topically speaking) and that back link make your site look
stronger as far as search engines are concerned. Also, remember
that the quality of the content to which you link also matters.
Link to strong pages (those with quality back links) on your
site, as well. Your article should reference other
authoritative, relevant articles so that search engines see that
your piece was written to offer real value to readers.

It's Not Quantity, It's Quality

It's no longer simply a matter of how many links point to a
site. There are many cases of sites in which 50 quality links
outrank sites with hundreds of links. It's not quantity, it's
the quality of the links that improve ranking in the SERPs.

Editorial links (links in hosted content) are more "natural"
from a search engine's perspective and, therefore, more valuable
because the article has, at most, two or three targeted links
pointing to your site's pages. Just like quality link bait,
which is unique, original and useful content, quality hosted
content on respected sites will also naturally develop its own
back links - the ultimate validation and the desired outcome of
placing quality content. Finally, because these links are found
on pages optimized with your keywords, search engines will
consider them extremely relevant to the subject at hand.

Start Your Hosted Content Campaign Today

It's being done everyday, successfully building small sites into
larger sites, providing free advertising for the
thought-leader/author, delivering less duplicate content to
search engines and more new content (plus revenue) to the
hosting site and, perhaps most importantly, hosted content
actually delivers useful, relevant information to readers –
exactly what search engines rank in the first place. As with any
link-building technique, hosted content can be abused, but
topically authoritative sites are not going to accept content
that does not meet their high standards – so everyone wins when
the goals are white hat.

Start searching for websites that might be interested in hosting
your next article, or start looking for a site owner interested
in content swapping. Create content that's unique, useful and
well-written and you may find that you won't even have to pay a
site owner to share your content with their readers – exactly
how it should be.
================================================================
Frederick Townes in the owner of W3-EDGE.  W3-EDGE is a
Boston-based web design company (http://www.w3-edge.com/)
specializing in W3C compliant and search engine friendly web
design.  Whether your needs fall into the Web 2.0
(http://www.w3-edge.com/web-site-design-articles/
2006-01-15-web-2.0-the-next-big-thing-or-the-evolution-of-a-technology.html)
category or if you just need an attractive design that will
convert your visitors into buyer, we have the solution for you.
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