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The effect of co-citation on your rankings
The effect of co-citation is often overlooked by search
engine optimizers. The other web sites to which your link
partners link can influence your search engine rankings.
Here's an example: web sites 1, 2, 3 and 4 all link to the
web sites A, B, C and D. Although A, B, C and D don't link
to each other, search engines think that A, B, C and D are
related to each other because the same web sites link to
them:
If A, B, C and D are all linked from 1, 2, 3 and 4 they
might be related to one another, even though they don’t
directly link to each other. If A, B, C and D are all linked
by many other web sites, they have a strong relationship.
The more web sites they are linked by, the stronger the relationship.
If your web site is web site A, you should make sure that
web sites B, C and D are related to your site.
Co-citation and bad link pages
Suppose you have a web site selling shoes. If you are
listed on a web site that links to gambling sites, viagra
sites and your shoe store then search engines might think
that your web site is related to gambling and viagra.
The search engines look at the link pages and check to
which other web sites the pages link. If the other pages
are gambling and viagra sites then search engines think
that your web site is also related to gambling and viagra.
That means that it might be difficult to get high rankings
for search terms that are about shoes.
Co-citation and good link pages
It's important that the other links on the web page that
links to you are related to your site. If you're listed
in the "Shoes" category of a link directory then all web
sites in the same category are usually also about shoes.
When search engines look at this page and check the links
to other sites they will think that your web site is related
to shoes.
That means that it will be much easier to get high rankings
for search terms that are about shoes.
What does this mean to your link campaigns?
When you exchange links with other web sites, make sure
that the link to your site is on a page that lists related
links. It's not necessary that the complete other web site
is about your topic. It's okay if the other web site has
a single category page that deals with the topic of your
web site. The link to your web site should be listed on
that page then.
The more pages of the other site are about your topic,
the better. Make sure that the link to your site is in
a good neighborhood and that the other links are related
to yours.
If you want to find out which web sites Google considers
related to your web site, go to Google and enter related:www.your-domain.com
in the search box. Replace your-domain.com with your own
domain name and make sure that there is no space after the
colon.
To find high quality web sites that could link to your web
sites, use ARELIS.
You might also want to take a look at the preview of
the new ARELIS version that has many new features. The new
ARELIS version will be a free update for users of the current
ARELIS version.
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