Building Links For Better Search Rankings
You have probably heard that search engines like to see links and many of them to a website, it helps the search engines to determine which sites they should list, as a link to a site is a bit like a vote for a site. That’s a reasonable viewpoint as, spammers networks aside, websites do tend to link to other sites that have something of interest to the first sites readers.
If you are a small business owner with a website how do you go about building links to your website? There are lots of ways to get links but it is important to know that all links are not the same, some are much more powerful than others. Just one link from a relevant authority site can be worth many links from other.
The best links to get are those that use your target keywords as the anchor text (the clickable words on the other site) and that also come from relevant sites in your industry or sites that are otherwise influential. (A link from Harvard University to your book-keeping website would be choice even if it is not related to your business!)
More good ways to get links to your website:
Firstly, have good content, it does not matter if its a blog or static website, give potential link sources something good to link to then promote it:
- Give it a mention in your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc accounts.
- Mention it in relevant forums and blogs that allow comments and links to articles.
- Bookmark it at the social bookmark sites like Digg and Delicious.
- Submit a shorter version to Ezinearticles or GoArticles with a link to the main article on your site of course.
- Blog it anywhere you got a blog.
Try to get your suppliers to link to your site or get links from professional associations.
Perhaps do a deal with a similar service in another city, a mention and link to them from a blog article of yours in return for a similar mention from them of your website.
See who is linking to your competitors and see if you can get links from them too. You can check your competitor links by typing the following string into your browser location bar:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:somedomain.com%20-site:somedomain.com
Remember to replace the two ‘somedomain.com’ bits in there with the domain you are examining.
Are there specialist directories in your industry? Prominent blog writers? – See if you can get links from them or a review of a product (with a link of course).
See if you can guest post in those industry blogs with a link or two to your site of course.
Often even unrelated websites are useful, local directories help to get your name out there have a little link juice and they are good citation references if you are hoping to get a Google Local Business listing (more about that another time…).
Why not write an article relevant to your industry and publish it on article directories or social sites like Hubpages.com. Remember to include a link back to your site of course! Better still, write a few articles and spread them around several article directories like Goarticles.com and Ezinearticles.com and some social sites like Hubpages.com and Squidoo.com. Interlink them a little and have links from all or most to your main site.
Got a blog section with an RSS feed on your site? Add the RSS feed to the various RSS distribution services such as feedagg and feedage.
Check out Adsurf for more Internet Marketing Tips
Every Website Needs External Links
When you own a website regardless of whether or not you are making a living from it you want people to see it. When people view your website they are known as visitors and there are various means of attracting traffic. A very good way to encourage visitors to your website is to have a good ranking on search engines. If you are looking for a way to boost your websites ranking external links could be ideal.
In short external links are links from other websites that link back to your original website. Links to a website are constantly checked by Google and other such search engines. These are then used to determine (amongst other things) where a website will be placed on search engine results pages.
Websites which have a large number of sites linking to it are seen in a more favourable light by search engines. This is further increased if the links are from websites which are trusted. To be trusted a website must be a quality ‘authority website. This means the site is seen to be a quality site by it’s visitors and not just a spammy site.
It can be easily to be put off from creating links as it can take some time. However once you have started to see the results you will know it is worth creating links. So don’t be put off by the work needed to establish quality links to your site.
One way to create external links back to a website is to speak to a website owner directly. So if you see a website that would be good to place a link on ask. You can return the favour by placing a link back to that website on yours. This practise is known as creating reciprocal links.
Article marketing is another common way to achieve a number of inbound, external links to your website or blog. If you use this approach, write informative articles that contain links back to your site. These articles can be distributed on various article directories or on niche specific websites addressing topics similar to your own.
Since not all webmasters are expert at developing backlinks, there are professional external linking services that can do the work for them. Using specialists for developing a backlinking strategy can often make good economic sense.
When these links are in place they will act as a way of drawing traffic via search engine results and through the linked sites. So not only is this a great method to use as it gets results it is also cost effective. It does not cost any money to have sites linking back to yours. In fact the only thing it will cost is your time in contacting the various website owners.
So if your website is in need of a boost you need to think about external links. Such links are cost free and can improve and increase unique visitors to a website in next to no time. Try it out yourself and you will soon see the benefits that can be achieved through this form of linking.
The Backlinks guide for idiots
Sometimes referred to as inbound links, backlinks are the sledgehammer of search engine positioning and traffic generation. When thinking about backlinks there are three elements you need to consider, the source from which the backlinks come from, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.
The amount of backlinks
The amount of backlinks to a page is one of the elements the search engines take into account when deciding how to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.
The source of the backlinks
The source of a backlink can pass authority and indeed traffic to the page to which it points. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive a much higher value consideration from the search engines. Pages from sources such as educational (.edu) or government (.gov) sites naturally are attributed with more trust and authority.
Google Page Rank
Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a value given by Google to a page that it considers over a period to have attracted, sustained and continued to accumulate relevant backlinks) pass some of their page rank via the backlink to the target page.
The ‘anchor text’
Similar to a label, the backlink anchor text influences the search engines classification of the backlink. If the content of the page is about ‘parenting’ and the backlink on the page is labeled or given the ‘anchor’ text ‘parenting’ then the search engines consider this to be of more value to the searcher looking for sites related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.
Common mistakes
A significant number of people mess up their backlinks strategies because they focus on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. For instance if the majority of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page come from sites not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost certainly bring you the wrong visitors.
How to manufacture backlinks
So let me tell you my fail safe process for acquiring backlinks that will make the search engines love you and bring the right type and appropriate traffic to your web site.
- Choosing the right keywords from the outset is essential.
- I like to create a keyword ‘cloud’.
- I most often start with a single primary keyword or key phrase which has significant visitor traffic.
- To uncover the volume of visitor traffic is being generated by searches for my top level keyword I use the Google keyword analyzer tool.
- I analyse words and search phrases relative to my primary phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
- Using this cloud I generate a library of content containing articles, videos and blog posts each with backlinks embedded with the related anchor text and then use a portfolio of content distribution tools to send my articles and videos to a group of directories.
- When I write my content I do so with the visitor in mind so as each piece of content attracts backlinks to itself as well as sends backlinks to my target pages.
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