Every city is different. Some have multiple
opportunities for adventure, others are known for a certain culture,
and some are known for particular types of commerce, but they all have
one commonality – numerous streets, highways and interstates bringing
traffic in and out of them. A well-marketed website has a lot of similarities
with a city. The roads leading into and out of the city are comparable
to links on a website. And just as having more roads facilitates more
traffic for a city, the more links to your website, the greater the
traffic as well, resulting in greater revenue for you.
Implementing Link Building
A web link is a connection from one web
site to another, or even another place in the same website. Link building
is the process of building a large quantity of incoming links. "Incoming"
means that another website links to your website, and not the other
way around. Effective link building is best done by using the following
approach:
- Set aside a regular block
of time to dedicate to link building. Although link building is
not tremendously complicated, it does take time. In addition, it is
critical to consistently review your link building and actively seek
more links on a regular basis. Unfortunately, link building is never
"done" as there are always more things you can do to build
links, so setting up a regular time devoted to link building will enable
you to avoid getting complacent with your link building efforts. - Evaluate link building
partners. Use tools like the Google Toolbar (with page rank enabled) which identifies what
search engines think of a sites quality/reputation. The higher the page
ranks (from 0-10) the more a link from that site to yours is worth in
boosting your search engine ranking. Just like a positive referral from
a previous employer would be more valuable to your resume than a referral
from your mom, websites also have varying levels of value.
Find potential link building partners
by searching for phrases that you would like to rank for. You want to
look for reputable sites, such as professional organizations that offer
articles and news posts on their site. Then write an article and submit
it to them to use. If they approve your article, they will most likely
be happy to credit you at the bottom with a link back to your website.
- Use directory services
such as the DMOZ Open Directory Project and the Yahoo Directory. These sites feed thousands of other
directories, so being listed in them will result in building a mountain
of incoming links to your site over time. - Set up a blog. This
is one of the best ways to build traffic to your site. It is done by
creating a lot of good content that other people would want to link
to. A blog is a great way to informally build pages of content to your
site over time. Make sure to have your web developer install the blog
locally on your site if possible (i.e. website.com/blog), rather
than using a free external blog to get maximum results. - Post articles and press
releases. A great way to build links is by writing articles and
press releases then posting them on numerous article syndication or
press release websites. - Use social media. Social
media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn all can be used
to build more traffic to your site. Experiment with a few social media
sites, find one that you like and dive in. Become an active participant
– read posts, answer people’s questions, actively look for opportunities
to link to other people and for opportunities to promote your blog or
other articles. However, be careful not to come across as only caring
about promoting yourself as nothing will turn people off faster than
that. - Be patient!
Link building is an ongoing process and it can take time to reap the
benefits of your hard work, but rest assured that if you keep at it
you will find significant boosting for your site on search engines.
And the best part is that most of these things don’t cost you a penny.
Forms of Link Building:
There are several forms of link
building to consider.
- Contextual links– These are links that are found within large blocks of content. These types of links have high value to search engines.
- Cross linking – When 2 or more websites simply exchange links, but the sites do not have any relevance
to one another and is done only for the sake of building links;
although this used to be a valid and commonly used link building
practice year ago, this is not highly recommended anymore as the links
often cancel each other out as far as page rank is concerned. - Deep linking– Deep links are links that go to a subpage within a site rather than the site’s home page. These are very valuable when link building.
- External links– External links simply mean they are linking to a website other than your own.
- Link bait- Targeting,
creating, and formatting content to encourage others to direct links to
that specific page. Often this is done with polls, contests, really
good content or other materials that other pople find valuable.
When you take the time to implement link
building, the roads into your city can become numerous. Yes, link building can be time consuming, but link building is one of
the keys to high page rankings. The key is to get started, jump in and manage your time wisely!