The Irrigation Approach

An approach that I have used to help people understand the dynamic linking side of search engine optimization is 'The Irrigation Approach'. In order to raise your site up the rankings, especially the Google rankings, it is helpful to imagine your site like an arid field: Your job is to sluice as much water to it as possible to make it thrive.

We want people to be able to get onto the site easily & so we need to make sure that the sluice gates to our site are open in order to let people and spiders through. In this case, getting as many well-qualified links to your site is good. Not all links will raise you up the rankings but if you take an holistic approach, each link allows people to flow through onto your site and so although a link might not have any worth to some search engines, you should always be open to the possibility that if it's allowing people in, it's broadening the market for and increasing the interest in your website.

If you imagine that each link is a leak in your irrigation system you can then decide whether you want a hole in a particular place or not. Some of the holes are beneficial - they may allow people and search engine spiders to leak into the places you most want them to visit.

Each link that has anchor text on it will deliever an accurate and focused sprinkle of people and spiders to your page. People will respond to the anchor text and you will get targeted visitors to your site and to pages on the site & the spiders will recognise how you have taken time to construct your irrigation system to deliver this timely sprinkle.

Each link that takes people away from the pages on your site that you want browsers to see is an unwanted leak. Each link that carries people out of the site is an unanted leak. Each link that takes search engine spiders away from the areas you want to index and appear high in the rankings is an unwanted leak.

You can use links at any interval on your site to allow people and spiders to leak anywhere. By using rel="nofollow", you can allow people to follow links (say to your terms & conditions) but keep spiders following along the channel. You can allow spiders to flow out in a pressurised torent to a few sites that you want to link to but if you link to many sites, then you will not have enough water in the system to make your land thrive.

There is a point where metaphor becomes confusing, but if you can imagine water springing out of each link to your site, it might help you to visualise the changes you need to make.