Businesses looking to enhance their managed search engine marketing activities may want to take heed of a set of linking best practices published by MarketingSherpa.

According to the research organisation, there are a number of tactics that marketers need to get to grips with – as well as some that are best avoided altogether – to use links to boost search engine optimisation.

It suggested that marketers look into developing useful content such as online tools that make certain processes easier – such as calculating interest on a loan – to increase inbound links.

Link bait such as breaking news reports and competitions can also significantly increase incoming links, as can getting content listed on social bookmarking websites, MarketingSherpa said.

However, businesses should be wary of trying to exert too much control over others' links, it warned, stating: "Do not ask every person linking to your site to use the same anchor text. Search engines penalise sites that have too many inbound links with the same text; it skews their results.

"They argue that 'naturally' created links would have more variance."

The BBC has recently started to include external links within its news articles – links that E-consultancy's Graham Charlton noted could be highly valuable.

Living Streams' comment:  By structuring a website with themes, the anchor text and landing page for new links can be spread across the site/themes thus limiting search engines' response to the desired positive impact on ranking.