Website Traffic Strategies: Building Incoming Links
- Written by Stefan Drew
If you have a website you’ll want it found on search engines like Google. Getting on Page One of Google is a sure way to get more visitors to your website and more money in your bank account.
One way to get high up the search engine results pages is to get plenty of incoming links to your website. These are links leading in to your site from other sites. Incoming links are the best types of link to get promoted up the search engine results page.
Like the rest of online marketing a lot of link building rules have changed in recent years. Strategies such as directory submissions, press releases, and of course buying text links are no longer as effective for link building as they once were – but don’t discount them for getting traffic or PR. What hasn’t changed is that a successful link-building campaign is major SEO practice and can increase search engine results.
Below are a few thoughts on a strategy for a successful link-building campaign.
Firstly however you need to identify the following: -
What about your website or organisation is "linkable?"
Who would want to link with you and why?
Which credible sites/organisations do you want to link to you?
How are you going to contact these people?What can you offer in return?
Invest In General Directories:
General directories such as Applegate, Yell and country-based telephone directories are low hanging fruit and easy to get on. So you need to be listed in them as you competition wil be there and you need to work on a level playing field!
Another site worth submitting to is DMOZ as it gives credibility and is free.
Submitting to a directory or blog is a fast way to ensure search engines find and index pages. This is especially true of blogs.
When submitting to directories try to get listed in more than one category, including regional categories where they exist.
If you aren’t sure if this investment is worth it check the search engine results pages for your industry keywords and see if competitor pages have links from these directories. If they do, compete by making the investment. If they don’t, this may be an opprtunity to get your site ahead of its competition in search results.
Submit to Industry Specific Directories:
Submitting a site to industry specific directories can provide more value than general directory submissions. Some of these directories are are a bit more flexible and allow anchor text. They are often also more topical and authoritative. In this way you can often get valuable links from sources that have been overlooked by your competitors.
Create Social Media Profiles:
It’s absolutely essential to build a profile on social media sites for your company name, brand and as an individual. This will allow you to promote content to a large audience which can lead to a lot of incoming links. Most social media sites do not pass on Google PageRank, but apparently a few do.
Don’t forget sites like Meetup.com, for example, which passes on Google PageRank and links to your site with the anchor text of your choice.
Think beyond social sites like Twitter and Facebook. You also need to be on the business networking sites such as LinkedIn. In fact, for many businesses, LinkedIn is probably the most important site of all.
SERP Link Building:
Search Engine Results Page link building takes time and patience.
Do a Google search for your top keywords and see what websites are ranking in the top 50 or 100 positions. These are all potential link targets, although obviously your competitors aren’t going to link to you, or you to them.
Select likely sites to link to you. The sites at the top of the list are likely to have more weight. To get them to link to you, see if the website has a “Links” or “Resources” section and request a link. Few sites have this facility and few will link unless you can give them a compelling reason to do so, but it is worth looking as if they rate you theuy might link to you if asked.
Consider expanding your search to noncompeting but related sites. You need sites that complement your content. Offer to guest blog or contribute an article and you could build a long term link partner.
Create a Blog:
Create a blog and when you have a few posts, submit it to the blog directorioes .. see Blog Directories. If time is an issue and you can’t find time to write content you could hire help or invite guest bloggers. Don’t forget to promote your blog posts via your social networking profiles; on Typepad blogs this can be automated.
Link your blog as a sub domain of your website as then you’lll also get more traffic.
Stefan Drew
