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.
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Top Link Building Mistakes That Marketers Make
All experienced marketers know how valuable link building is for successful SEO. But that doesn’t mean you should get them from just anywhere at any price. Link building, if done the wrong way, will always result in spending more time and more money. The smartest approach to your link building is the ethical and proper one. While the short cuts look appealing, it won’t be worth it if Google bans your site.
Link building practices have undergone important changes in the last few years. Link building has not gotten easier but rather harder. Google’s policies are more stringent on people who try to cheat and take short cuts. But some black hat methods such as comment and link spamming are still used by many marketers. But there are many accepted ways to build your backlinks, where the whole process takes time, which is why marketers end up making some costly mistakes that have a negative affect on their websites.
The first link blunder is having a backlink from bad real estate. Or, backlinks from sites with a less than stellar reputation. If you unknowlingly link to such a website, the search engines will lower your SEO score which will only hurt your rankings. If you link to a site with bad reputation, you’re telling the search engines you think it’s a reputable site. The problem is they will not agree with you – and you’ll get slapped with penalties. So that’s the reason you should check a site’s reputation before proceeding with backlinking. In the event your site is giving a backlink: If you’re offered payment to ‘give’ a backlink to a site known to have a bad reputation, you should decline it because it will only hurt your site. You can prevent issues down the road by staying clear of these websites.
Failing to use the ALT tags in images is a very common mistake. Even though text links are a better option than image links, in a situation where you can only use the image link, ALT text is really important since it has your targeted keywords.
In conclusion, link building is a game that has many known and many hidden rules that you need to follow. It does not matter why you may have broken a rule, doing so will produce site penalties and aggravation for you. It’s a great idea to stay current with information regarding SEO/linking. You’ll stay out in front of the competition, plus you’ll help prevent mistakes. These practices will only make your link-building experience more positive, plus it’ll help your search engine rankings.
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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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