Contextual Linking

One form of power linking is contextual linking. This a method where written text has an underlying link to a specific webpage on your website. It just does not point to your home page, it is targeted to a page.

The text used (which is also referred to as anchor text), consists of your keywords that also match up to the ones on your target webpage. Contextual links can be from your own website, where a link in a sentence  points to another webpage within your own website or they can also be from other websites, blogs, articles or social sites pointing to any one of your webpages.

It is important to ensure that you use the correct set of keywords in the anchor text and that these keywords also match and are included in the target webpage and in the meta keywords section.

Contextual linking becomes even more effective when these links are pointing to a webpage on your site from another site which has relevant content to yours.

Ideally these links are setup within the body of a sentence of an article or a paragraph. They create natural links and are also referred to as deep links.

Creating these links are most challenging as content, paragraph and sentences have to be worded such that the link blends in and becomes part of the topic and reads well. If they are originally created by the web owner to provide added information to his/her site visitors then the link will be a natural one way link and very easy as no link back is expected. But in a case where two sites agree to do a reciprocal contextual link exchange then a lot more work needs to be done by the two webmasters. They have to ensure the anchor text has right keywords and the link is pointing to the correct page and most importantly the contextual link blends within the existing text of the two sites so as to create a very natural link.

Here is an example of a contextual link;

If you are looking for websites to link to and from and build natural one way links; then visit the following Web Link Directory.

This text you see is a selection of keywords that match to the keywords in the Meta Keyword and the Webpage, this text is called the anchor text. The underlying link is a hyperlink to the Webpage. The text that is displayed when you hover your mouse over the anchor text is called title text.

You should be using this format of linking even within your own website to call on different pages in your content when appropriate. It reemphasizes to the search engines the key words and also notifies them what your target page is all about. Stay away from sentences that always state "Click Here" or "Part 2" and such. Use anchor text when navigating a user to another page or site - ALWAYS.

In the above example the words; Web Link Directory are keywords that are also present on the target page (including the meta keywords) and clearly show that that the target webpage is a website linking directory.

Also note how the link blends within the content around it and looks so natural. This is a very powerful way to link and can really boost your ranking with the search engines.

Work on this sort of deep links, it may take time and you will find most web owners will be reluctant to agree on account of two main reasons; one it is an effort and secondly most do not know how pipeful this form of linking is and are used to straight 1-1 links, which nowadays do not have much value.

Last item to remember with contextual or deep linking is that the two sites have content relevancy. In other words do not try to do this if one site is  about ammunition and the other is about honey.