This week, we're taking a look at 7 things you can do to improve the link structure of your website. The right internal link structure can improve your rankings.

In the news: more information about the Microsoft/Yahoo deal, details about Yahoo's new indexing patent and more.

Table of contents:

• Facts of the week
• Search engine news of the week
• Articles of the week
• What is new in IBP version 10? - The SEO tool with a guarantee: Part 3
• Recommended resources
• Previous articles

The internal link structure of a website is a search engine optimization factor that is often overlooked by webmasters.

Why does the link structure of your website has an effect on your rankings?

The internal link structure of your site allows you to spread the link power of your home page to the individual pages of your site.

For example, if 1000 other websites link to your home page, then your home page has a certain link power that can be spread to the other pages of your site. If you link to 50 pages on your home page then each page will get 1/50 of the link power. If you link to only 10 pages, then each page will get much more link power passed to it (1/10).

The more link power a page receives, the more likely it is that the page will get high rankings on search engines. Your internal link structure allows you to direct search engines to your most important pages.

How to improve the internal link structure of your website

There are several things that you can do to improve the rankings of special pages on your website:

1. Make sure that the most important pages on your site can be reached with as few clicks as possible from your home page. The fewer clicks you need to get to a web page, the more important it looks to search engines.
   
   
2. Link to the pages for which you want to have high rankings from all pages of your website that are related to that page. The easiest way to get related links to a web page is to link from your own website.
   
   
3. Use your targeted keywords in the links to these pages. Make sure that you use keywords that are highly relevant and targeted.
   
   Show search engines for which keywords your web pages are relevant.
   
   
4. Make the links on your website absolute. Do not link to mypage.htm but to www.yoursite.com/mypage.htm. If other people scrape your web page contents, you'll get backlinks from these sites.
   
   
5. Add a nofollow attribute to all links that aren't important for your search engine rankings. For example, your privacy policy page or the web page with your terms and conditions probably needn't be listed in search engines.
   
   The fewer links you have on a page, the more important is the single link to the other pages on your site. If possible, remove unnecessary links from your web pages.
   
   
6. Use your robots.txt file or the robots meta tag to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages from indexing. This is very similar to tip 5. If search engines don't have to parse your unimportant pages they can take a close look at the pages for which you want to be ranked.
   
   
7. Check your website for 404 not found errors and redirect these old links to the most appropriate pages. You might want to use the link checker that you can access in the new IBP 10 beta.

By optimizing the structure of how your web pages pass their link power, you can influence how search engines treat the content of your website.

Once you have optimized the link structure of your website, you should try to get more links from other websites.

It's hard to beat a website with a great internal and external link structure.

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Yahoo! set to revive merger talks with AOL after rejecting hostile takeover

"Yahoo! is seeking to restart merger talks with AOL as a means of defending itself against the $45 billion (£23 billion) hostile bid approach from Microsoft [...]

It is understood that Yahoo! and its team of advisers from Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, the US investment banks, have spent the past week evaluating possible tie-ups with media and technology firms that would save it from being swallowed by Microsoft."

Related: Yahoo's rejection pressures microsoft to mull a new bid, Yahoo!'s unlikely candidate for sugar daddy, Microsoft responds to Yahoo! announcement

Yahoo phrase based indexing in a nutshell

"Search engines are getting smarter about the phrases that they see and understand online, and Yahoo recently published a patent application that describes a number of the ways that they learn about and understand the use of phrases in documents on the Web."

Google's US ad share drops for first time in two years

"Google lost ground in the U.S. Internet advertising market for the first time in two years during 2007 due to slower growth in the fourth quarter."

• Live Search: Snow reports for skiers and boarders.
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• Should IAC (Ask.com) merge with AOL?
• Rumor: Plaxo sold to Google for $200M?
• Rumor: is Google about to buy Bebo for $1 Billion to $1.5 Billion?
• Mysterious Google interface design.
• Google profits from MySpace attackers.
• The strange afterlife of AltaVista.

The new Top 10 Optimizer

We have greatly improved the Top 10 Optimizer for IBP 10. The new Top 10 Optimizer now analyzes the contents of your web page as well as the inbound links.

The Top 10 Optimization report now gives you a Top 10 Ranking Requirements Score (tm). The score tells you how many of your web page elements meet the requirements for a top 10 ranking on the selected search engine for the selected keyword:

New: top 10 rankings or money back

The new Top 10 Optimizer in IBP 10 is so good that we can offer you a top 10 rankings or money back guarantee. If you want to get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines, then IBP should be your choice.

If you cannot wait to get started with IBP 10, click here to download the beta version.

Note: If you have or buy the current IBP version, the new IBP version 10 will be a free update for you.

Get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines

IBP's Top 10 Optimizer decrypts Google's ranking algorithm and it tells you what exactly you have to do to get top 10 rankings on Google.

Webmasters all over the world successfully use IBP to get first page rankings on Google. Try it now.

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