I’ve grouped various tools into different  categories (alth0ugh some tools do belong in multiple categories).  Most of the tools listed below are free, some are paid, and many of the paid services also offer a free (cut down) version of the tool as well.

Keyword Analysis Tools

• Google Instant – an often overlooked but very quick and easy way to check for high volume search keywords
• Google Keyword Tool – Allows you to enter trial keywords or a website name. Shows list of related search counts globally and locally
• Google Insights – A great tool for for showing trend data – you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties
• Google Analytics -  Looking at your own analytics data is a good way to see which keywords are already working well
• PPC Data – setting up a PPC campaign and analysing click and conversion rates can be a very effective (and quick) way to get data about high converting (as opposed to high traffic) keyword phrases
• Your Customers – Talk to your customers to see what keywords they would/did use to find your business
• Brainstorming – talk to friends/colleagues to brainstorm related keyword phrases (don’t just rely on the keywords that you think are good)

Many of the “traditional” Keyword Tools used by SEO Pros (such as Wordstream, Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker) were felt to be of limited use to Australian users – although they can be very useful for very detailed analysis, because their data is sampled, and largely USA biased, for the most part they were not considered to be useful for Australia based keyword analysis.

Browser Plugins

Firefox was widely accepted as the web browser of choice  for SEOs – largely because of it’s plugin capabilities , with other browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Flock etc) mainly only used for compatibility testing.

• SEO for Firefox – considered one of the most comprehensive (and useful) of the many SEO plugins available
• Chatzilla – useful IRC plugin to ask people for advice suggestions on SEO
• Firebug – possibly for of a developer than SEO tool but VERY handy for debugging HTML/CSS and lots of other web page/ browser based issues

WordPress Plugins

With WordPress becoming increasingly important as a blogging platform / Content management System (CMS) we felt that we simply had to imnlcude some of the many SEO related plugins for WordPress

• All In One SEO- one of the original and still arguably best general purpose SEO plugins
• Google XML Sitemaps – auto generates a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.
• Google Analytics for WordPress – easy setup your Analytics code, allows you to track your blog easily and with lots of metadata.
• SEO friendly Images – automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images.
• SEO Smart Links – can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.
• Sexy Bookmarks – adds an attractive social bookmarking menu to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three.
• WordPress SEO by Yoast - all in one SEO solution for your WordPress blog: SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.
• And also a number of Search Engine Friendly Themes got an honourable mention – e.g. StudioPress – Genesis Theme, and Thesis

 Analytics Tools

Pretty much the ONLY tool discussed was of course Google Analytics.  Way too much about this tool to cover here, but it is likely to be the topic of a future Meetup

Ranking  Tools

We were pretty pleased to discover that no-one was particularly interested in PageRank, and that even our clients had started to get the picture that PageRank in itself is not something worth obsessing about.  However, ranking reports can be a quick and easy way to monitor the impact of SEO strategies over a period.  Many of the SEO Suite based tools (see below) offer rank tracking tools and

BackLink Tools

• Yahoo Site Explorer – once recognised as the single best way to get fairly decent backlioni data on your competitors site – is now seen as no longer reliable and on it’s last legs as a useful tool
• Webmaster Tools – the most accurate source of backlink data for your own site – not available for competitors though (dammit !!!)
• Open Site Explorer – SEOMOZ’s famous Link Popularity Checker + Backlink Analysis Tool
• Majestic SEO – perhaps the worlds most comprehensive source of backlinks information
• Market Samurai -  a Suite tool (see below) that offers some good backlink reporting
• Backlinkwatch – enter a website URL to get detailed information about quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to the site
• Blekko – a “search” engine with a difference.  “slashtag” capabilities extend the info that Blekko offers – try www.yourdomain.com /seo

Conversion Optimisation Tools

There are hundreds of specialist tools that can be sued for Conversion Optimisation – here are a few that were mentioned :

• Google Website Optimizer – Google’s free website testing and optimization tool makes it quick and easy to implement A/B split testing and monitor and measure results.
• ClickTale - discover everything visitors do on your website. Visitor Recordings, Mouse Move Heatmaps, Heatmap Suite, Form Analytics and more…
• CrazyEgg – simple and affordable heat mapping tools that allow you to visually understand user behaviour
• Screenr – web-based screen recorder makes it a breeze to create and share your screencasts around the web.  From a CRO perspective this is a great tool to record test users behaviour – including their commentary on what/why they are doing thing.

SEO Tool Suites

• SEOMOZ SEO Tools – A comprehensive (and sexy) array of SEO tools : Link Building, Competitor Analysis, Keyword research, Optimisation, and more….
• SEO Powersuite – offer a range of SEO Tools from LinkAssitant – including Rank Tracker, Website Auditor,  SEO Spyglass and Link Assistant
• Raven SEO Tools – Internet marketing tools for SEO and Social media  (tends to be higher end, more sophisticated/complex tools for SEO professionals/agencies)
• Market Samurai – Great general purpose and good value tools for internet marketing and SEO

THE Most Important SEO Tool of All ??

And the single most important tool for any self respecting SEO is of course…  EXCEL.  Excel is critical for Collating, Filtering, Analysing and Sorting the reams of data that most SEOs accumulate in their day to day activities.

Link Building Strategies

Many website owners feel that getting links is very difficult or that their website is not good enough to get backlinks. Link Building can be a time consuming process, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.  Here are some of the Link Building Hints and Tips that were raised at the recent Brisbane SEO Meetup :

1. Make sure that your website is link worthy

One of the fundamental strategies  for getting backlinks (and probably the easiest way to ensure natural, relevant and quality link building) is to ensure that there is actually something on your wbesitye that is worth linking to.

If you stumbled across your site, would you link to it ? If not, why would anyone else bother?  Here are some questions that you should consider to help you determine what type of ciontent could lead to oitheres wanting to link to you :

• What types of sites do you link to?
• What types of things are relevant/interesting/linkworthy for your niche?
• What makes your company unique? (How are you different to your competitors?)
• Do you offer giveaways or competitions?
• Are there any news or stories about the people in your company?

Create pages/posts on your website that deal with the type f content that others will find useful content and they are more inclined to link if you ask – you also might be pleasnetly surprised at how many links you start to get without even asking for them.

2. Directory Listings

One of the quickest and easiest ways to start a link building campaign is to add links to some of the many online business directories.  Theer are many many dirtectories out there, some are general, others might be specific to your niche, some are free and others require a listing fee.  You should be very careful about where you list.  Some free directories are actually quite good, many paid directories can be a waste of money.  Spend some time reviewing the types of sites listed – and also check to see whether your competitors are listed.  when you do searches in your niche you may start to notice particular directories that are showing up consistently – you should consider listing with these.

Some of the Australian Directories worth considering are TrueLocal, HotFrog and AussieWeb.

Some of the paid directorties which have historically been worth opaying for listings are Yahoo Directory, Best of the Web, Joe Ant.

Remember, directory listings may be a good start, but because theye are relatively easy to do, it is likely that many of your competitorsa are also using this – so if you want to sta6y ahead of the pack, you will need to do more than they do.

3. Forum/Blog Comments

Where does your target market go online? Which websites, forums and networks are used by your customers? These websites and forums are the types of sites from which you should try to get backlinks.Adding comments to relevant forums has also long been considered a useful backlinking strategy.  The technique is to find a forum (or blog post) that is relevant to your niche, and leave a comment – along with a link back to your site (whether as a suggested source of further information, or as part of your “signature”).

It is importanat that when you plan to comment on a forum, that you actually add value.  Participate in the forum, get a feel for the conversion, and try to ensure that your comment is informative, helpful or useful.  A comment such as “Come to my website – xyz.com” is likely to be considered as span and could give you (and ytour sitre) a bad reputation amiongst fiorm members, whereas a seroies of helpful, useful and relevat comments and interactions over a period, with a few subtle references to your site is likley to be more successful.

There has been loads of debate over how the “nofollow” attribute may affect your backlinks from forums, but whether or not this has a direct impact, the value of these tyopes of links is considered to be not as useful as it once was.  But there are plenty of other reasons why participating in forums can be of benefit.  Forums where your potential customers hang out are a great place to find out what people are talking about in your niche.  What are their problems? What do they need? What are they saying (if anything) about your business?  Visitors to these forums might also directky follow a link back to your site and become a customer.

It is possble to use “clever” search queries to identify relevant forms to your niche.  Queries in Google (or other search engines)  based on the following can make it easier for you to find places to leave comments :

“your niche keyword” +forum site:.com.au
“keyword” +comment site:.edu.au
“keyword” +”post a comment” site:.gov.au

4. Product reviews

Consider sending out a free product (or offer a free trial of a service) to influential bloggers/users in your niche in return for writing a review on their site.

5.  Offer a Competition

What are a bunch of links worth to you??? Consider buying something “cool” in your niche (or use an unwanted gift) and offer it as a prize in a competition.  Notify relevant websites/bloggers and encourage them to link to the competition.

6. Review your business memberships

Are you a member in a business association? Have your company or your products received any awards? Is there a local Chamber of Commerce? What are the governing bodies for your industry? Check if these websites link to your site and try to find new business associations that might be related to your business.  This can be particularly useful for getting Locality targeted links.

7.  Indirect Competitors

A link from a closely related, relevant website is better than one from a site which has little or nothing to do with your niche.  You probably wouldn’t get a link from a direct competitor, but if your product/service is only avaialble in a certain geographic area, it could be mutually beneficial (and sensible) to exchange links with a similar business in anotjer location.  For exampler,  A Brisbane based BMW dealer, is unlikley to see a Perth BMR dealer as a competitor, but linikinbg to each others websites might be a good idea.

8. Leverage your offline relationships

Offline relationship that you have with other businesses, people and publications can often be turned into online relationships that include links to your website.

9.Write testimonials

If you like the product or service of a company, send them a testimonial. Your testimonial may be listed on the company website along with a link to your site.

10.Sponsorships and social activities

Does your company sponsor any local activities? Do you support relief organisations? If you do, you can get direct links from the organiser of the activity and you can create linkworthy content on your website by writing about your activities.

11. Review your existing backlinks

Analysing the websites that already link to your website (and where they link to) can help you to get an idea of the linkworthy content on your website. You will also learn why other websites link to your site.

12. Review your competitors backlinks

Analyse your competitors backlinks to see which websites link to them – some (but probably not all) of these sites may be suitable backlinks for you.  See what type of content their backlinks go to – and consider creating similar content of your own.

13. Write And Submit A Press Release

If you or your business has done something newsworthy (and linkworthy) then tell the world about it. Write a short Press release about it (including a link back to your site) and submit it via a submission service like PR Web and send it to your local media outlets.

14. Track Who’s Republishing Your Content And Offer Them Unique Articles

Publish articles in various popular article directories (e.g. ezinearticles.com). A few weeks later, Google the exact title of the article and your name to see what sites have picked up the article. Then contact the owner of each website that has published the article and offer them additional unique articles (which of course link back to your site).

15. Offer to be a Guest Blogger

Find an authority site or blog that is related to your niche, contact the owner and offer to write a unique post or article for them. This is a great way to raise your profile and give you credibilty within your niche, and if the post is good, you may be invited to write more.  Include a bio with the post (with a link back to your site of course).

Saying that, with the right approach, and a clever strategy, Link Building does not have to be a painful process.

Identifying Authority Backlink Partners

Determining  which sites are likely to be the best ones for you to seek links from, should be an important part of your Link Building strategy.  A few quality links from important (and relevant) websites are likely to be of much greater benefit to your rankings than many links from relatively unknown sites.  Undertaking a Competitor Analysis – where you focus on the sites that are already achieving top ten rankings for your primary keyword phrases, is a great way to start.

As a part of this competitor analysis exercise(which should include an analysis of your competitors backlinks), it is quite likely that a number of important, influential, or authority websites will show up repeatedly.  These sites are probably “Authority websites” and are ones that you should probably be targeting as important sites for you to try and get backlinks from.

5 Backlink Strategies for Authority Websites

Approaching authority websites can be difficult and daunting exercise, but having some specific strategies in place, can improve your hit rate be a lot more effective at getting quality backlinks.  Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz,  in one of his regular Blackboard Friday sessions recently presented : Creative Ways to Get Links from a Reluctant Target (see below).  I’ve summarised 5 of his suggested backlinking strategies here:

1. Testimonials – Most sites are keen to get (and publish) testimonials about specific aspects of the products/services that they provide – particularly if it is not one of those “anonymous testimonials”, but also includes name, position, business name and perhaps even a photo.  Write a testimonial for their site and send it through, saying that you are happy for them to use it if they wish.
2. Get Social – Establish a relationship with the business on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) – follow them, friend them, retweet  them, interact with them, comment on their posts, etc… and over time you will develop a relationship which could very well lead to a link… and who knows what other opportunities.
3. Personal Connection – Start to hang out in the places where you know your target market is likely to go – Conferences, Events, Trade shows, seminars, etc… Get to know them face to face, and try having real conversation.  Note we do not recommend stalking
4. Media Mentions – If you manage to get talked about in the media (Newspaper, Magazines, Radio) and happen to mention the third party, it helps raise your profile with them, and is also a good excuse to contact them to highlight the mention.
5. Compatible Content – If you have (or can create) some content on your own site that could be of benefit/interest to customers of the site you want to get links from, let them know about it, and invite them to link.

Here is Rand’s Blackboard Friday Video :

In determining rankings, all search engines also take into account the “value” that the rest of the web places on a particular website or page. One of the best ways for search engines to determine this “value“, is the way that websites link to each other. How often related websites mention a particular site and, most importantly, how they link to it, is a pretty accurate way for a search engine to determine which pages are going to be useful to searchers.

Link Building Tips

Establishing inbound links to your pages is crucial, and Link Building, should be a fundamental strategy in any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign. But exactly how do you go about generating links to your site? Traditionally building up this “link juice” can be a hard and tiresome process, but I’ve outlined below some tips for beginners on How to Get Links:

1. Link Farms? – Not any more

First up – something that you should NOT be doing… Once upon a time – not so very long ago, a technique – called link farming – involving the creation of lots of (usually junk) sites, with plenty of cross linking  was a reasonably effective way to build rankings. However, the search engines quickly realised that most of these sites were of little or no benefit to users, so they adjusted their algorithms to give priority to relevant and authoritative websites. The quantity of links to your website is not as important as the quality.

Don’t waste your time or money creating (or even worse – paying for) hundreds of questionable links hoping it will help your rankings – it won’t. At best, search engines will ignore these types of links; at worst they may tarnish the credibility of your site, and result in penalties being applied.

2. Content is Key

An obvious, but often overlooked, fact is that “if you want someone to link to your site, you have to give them something worth linking to“. If you ask someone to link to you – why would they bother unless there was something on your site that interested them or would be of interest to their users. The perfect way to encourage inbound links is simply to fill your pages with useful, informative, interesting, entertaining, or relevant content.

3. Blog about it

One great way to add content to your site is to set up a blog. Search engines LOVE Blogs as they typically contain topical, dynamic content. Blog posts are generally crawled and indexed by search engines very quickly, and can be often found in the search results within minutes of being posted. If your posts are interesting, topical, controversial, humorous, or informative people will naturally link to them, and by adding their own comments, will automatically generate extra, relevant content to your site.

4. Going Viral

Sometimes, you may hit a nerve, or strike a chord with the online community by publishing a post that becomes very popular and “goes viral“. These types of posts, for a variety of reasons, get attention and tend to have a snowball effect, as more and more people become aware of them, and feel compelled to spread the word. Articles of this type are known as ‘link bait’, because people naturally want to link to them, and can very quickly generates hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. It is worth striving for a viral post, but it is extremely difficult to do. You also need to consider the impact on your credibility – a shocking or controversial post, might generate amazing link juice, but keep in mind what long term impact it might it have on you or your sites reputation.

5. Be Social

Be active in the Blogs/Forums/Social Media sites that are relevant to your industry. Don’t just read about it, participate, and make an effort to actively comment on topics and issues that you are knowledgeable about. Develop a “presence” and over time you can subtly include references and possibly links to your site. Do NOT push this too hard – no one likes a pushy salesman.

6. Network

One very important way to develop inbound links to your web pages is to capitalise on your contacts in the industry. In your day to day dealings with suppliers, customers, industry associations, and even competitors, keep the possibility of a backlink in mind – and don’t be shy to ask. The best backlinks are those that come from relevant sites – and could there be anything more relevant than other sites within your industry?

7. Anchors Away

Not only are the quality and quantity of backlinks important – but the way the links are applied also plays a part. Anchor text refers to the text that is used in the link, and although you may not always have control over what anchor text is used – wherever possible try to use primary keywords rather than generic text. A link to your site with the anchor text “click here” is likely to be of much less value than “buy keyword now“.

8. Deep Link

Wherever possible mix up the links to your site. Although the majority of backlinks will often go to a websites home page, a natural link profile will also include links to other pages within a site. Try to establish targeted backlinks, with more specific anchor text, to pages deep within the structure of your site.

There are literally hundreds of ways you can generate backlinks to your website, this post has outlined some of the fundamentals, and provides some quick and easy tips about how you can develop links to your website, with the aim of raising your online profile and improving your rankings. If you’d like further assistance, please feel free to contact us at WebConsulting SEO.

As you are probably aware, Link Building is a very important part of optimising your site. Having quality backlinks from authoritative third party websites is almost as important as having good quality unique content on your own site.

There are plenty of business directories around where you can get free listings, but most of these are of limited “link value”.  There are also plenty of paid directories, although many of these are a complete waste of money.  However, there are a relatively small number of paid directories which are well recognised as authority directories, and are known to pass on valuable “link juice” and will help with your rankings.

For larger businesses, getting listings on these important directories is a standard part of their marketing strategy, but for small business, with limited budgets, the cost can be an issue.  Many of the best paid directories are based in the United States – with listings being charged in US$, so right now with the high AU$, these listings are more affordable than they ever have been.

Hint : You can identify other potentially useful directories to list in by examining the backlinks of you main online competitors (the sites that are already achieving top 10 rankings for your primary keywords) and looking for patterns.

Don’t  be concerned that  these directories are US based, and your clients are in Australia – you are not listing on these directories for the direct traffic they generate (although you may be surprised how much you get), you are listing because of the “link love” that they will pass onto you.  Listings in quality directories can have a direct impact on your organic rankings – and are also likely to improve your Google Places Page rankings in the “7 pack”.

Best Paid Directories

I have listed below some of the best paid directories currently available.  Each of these directories works on a “review” fee rather than a “listing” fee basis and offer no guarantee that your site will be listed.  However, as long as you follow their guidelines you should not have any problems with having your site listed.

Best of the Web – US$149.95

BOTW  provides  listings for an annual recurring review fee of US$149,95 (this can be cancelled whenever you wish).

Currently (during October 2010) BOTW are offering a 20% discount on this – Just US$119.96 if you use the promo code “save20“.

If you are interested in receiving additional exposure and want to customise your advertising message, you can get a Free 30 day trial of sponsoring a category on BOTW at   (hint: this can be cancelled at any time).

Yahoo Directory – US$299

Yahoo Directory is probably one of the most important directories.  Your single listing will appear in more than a dozen international directories.  You need to register your listig via Yahoo Express on the US site

Business.com – US$299 per year

You can find out more and Register Here (and get $50 Off)

Joe Ant – US$39.99

Directory World – US$24.95

Hint: many directories require you to specify which category you think is the most appropriate for your listing – and you may need to submit your site from the category that you think is best.  Spend some time looking through the directory – there are often several categories where your site could belong.  Take a note of where your competitors are listed.

Submitting your listing should be reasonable straightforward, but be careful about how you describe your business, what keywords you target, and what category you choose.  If you’d like some assistance, please feel free to contact us at WebConsulting for advice.

If you want other websites to link to yours then you need to give them a reason to do so and, other than paying them (which is frowned upon by the search engines), your best option is to have something on your site that is of real interest to others. This could be a video, a game or a picture, but a well written article will often be enough. As long as you have something people want, and that they can’t get anywhere else, you can be sure to get links.

Linkbaiting

Linkbaiting is another name for this term, and it means that you have to make something that is unique and special, something no other website has. As long as your notion is original, you should have few problems linkbaiting. Keep in mind that you will not get more results than other people if you are just providing the same stuff they are.

There is a lot of evidence as to the effectiveness of linkbaiting, as long as you do it right, and you can save a lot of money with this method. If you just spend a little bit of time getting your linkbait ready, it will really pay off for you in the amount of backlinks you get, which could number in the hundreds, given a few months to propagate the content.

Niche-relevant sites will link to you from all around the Internet. Some people do not take the linkbaiting approach because they can not be bothered to spend the time coming up with content that is new and different. Instead they spend their time manually building links to their sites.

There can really be no comparison between the effectiveness of the two techniques though. Linkbaiting is the hands down winner every time, so long as it is done correctly. In the event you just don’t know how to make your own linkbait, you can hire people who do. Companies exist on the market that can help you provide the linkbait that you have been waiting for, creating exclusive content just for you that will draw people in droves to your website. Considering the big picture and just how much these services can help you, they are not that expensive, so be sure to check them out the next time you want to expand your business.

More : Linkbaiting

A time consuming but effective technique is blog commenting. You need to start out by searching for relevant blogs in your niche market and commenting on their posts. You do not want to include anything promotional in your comments on these blogs. Such comments will be automatically deleted and thus accomplish nothing. What you need to do is create quality posts that are informative to those who will read them. You stand a much better chance of having your comment actually accepted by the moderators of the blog this way, and you will also build up your brand name within the niche. Once you create a brand of yourself you can let your own site be known and watch the traffic flood in. This is a great way to make a name for yourself and will lead to well targeted visitors. Word of mouth is something most internet marketers overlook. Now, the word of mouth doesn’t always need to be the traditional viral marketing thing. You might even start getting the word out with people you are already acquainted with. They will likely promote your site by telling others. They already trust you so trust your product and because they are friends they want to see you succeed. And things get better if they have an online presence such as a blog, because they will already have visitors, which means they can blog about your site and give you the needed exposure. Are you ready to learn how the pros make their money online? Then have a look at this Traffic Siphon internet site.

Another tested and true method of bringing in traffic is trading links with other sites that operate in the same niche as you. This can produce better results than just about any other strategies and it creates a series of great synergies for you as both you and your partners will benefit.

This cross promotional method will be a great strategy for you to use to get more people to see your site. What’s more, you also get an added benefit of higher search engine rankings because of the extra back links you generate. There really are plenty of options out there for creating quality traffic. You are only limited by your imagination. The thing you need to look out for is that you do not waste time and money using ineffective methods like traffic exchanges or FFA links.

Additional Resources:
Affiliate System

When starting up a new link building campaign, there are two basic questions you should be considering :

1. What is unique about your site that others might want to link to?
2. Who might be interested in linking to you, and what information would be of use to them?

Gaining a good understanding of the answers to these questions is a fundamental starting point . It helps you gain an insite into the types of information that you may be able to offer the people in your space, or related spaces. It will very likely also highlight, extra contenmt that you may be able to provide, which will offer added value to your customers and potential customers.

Here are the five things that you should also think about when kicking off a new link campaign:

1. Start by identifying who the major media people are in the same space as you. At this stage dont’ be too concerned about their potential to link to you. This should form a complete list of traditional media, bloggers, government, school, and hobbyist sites that are related to your products/services.

2. Next prioritise the list ranging from top tier players to lower tier players. Links from from any of them will help, but getting a link from a top tier player is worth more effort.

3. Re-examine the current and potential content of your site to see how it matches up with the needs and interests of the top tier targets.

4. If necessary (and it usually is), put in place a content development plan to implement the right types of content to match up with the best targets. Several new articles may need to be written.

5. Begin the process of contacting your targets, and getting them interested in the unique cool content that you have.

Remember, good link building should always starts in the same place – Identifying the targets… Good Luck !

It’s also important that you get the right kind of links. 20 “good ” incoming links will get you much better rankings than than 100 bad incoming links.

OK, so what makes a good incoming link? There are a number of points that can make a link better than other links:

1. Use your keyword in the anchor text

Make sure that the texts that are used to link to your website contain words for which you want to get high rankings on search engines.

2. Relevancy

Links from related web pages almost always work better than links from unrelated pages. Links from unrelated pages may not hurt your rankings (although they are unlikely to help) but Google likes links from websites that cover topics that are related to yours better.

3. Relevant landing page on your site

While it’s okay to get links to your home page it is better to get links to the page that is most relevant to the chosen anchor text. If the link text matches the content of the linked pages then it’s more likely that your web page is really relevant to that term and it’s more likely that you’ll get high rankings for that search term.

4. Authority Links

Links from pages with high “authority” will help to increase the TrustRank of your website. Links from websites with high PageRank have a positive effect on the rankings of your own site.

If a website is well known and if the site has good search engine rankings then it’s
likely that it is also an authority website.

5. No nofollows

The nofollow attribute tells search engines that they should not follow a link. Links with that attribute will not help your search engine rankings.

You will probably have to check the HTML code of your link partners to find out if they use a nofollow attribute to link to your site (do this by viewing the source, finding you link, and looking to see if “nofollow” is present)