It is understood by most people that in order to succeed in improving your search engine results, link building is a requirement for any competitive phrases. While there are a number of things that can be accomplished through on-site optimization, link building is unquestionably the most effective, and defensible strategy for long-term success when trying to rank your website on Google. But link building has become the equivalent of cold-calling for many people responsible for optimizing their companies website, an action to be avoided at all costs.
The fact is that implementing a link building program for your website is neither difficult nor complicated. There are a number of places to look for relavent inbound links, but it does take time, effort and persistence.
- Are there any product / service review sites relating to your company?
- Writing guest posts for reputable blogs related to your market?
- Premium directory submissions.
- Free directories or niche directories.
- Article submissions.
- Requesting reciprocal links from industry sites, friends, etc.
These are just a few suggestions which can be explored immediately, there are literally thousands of sources of new links. One of the first things to do is to do an audit of your competitors, and see where they are getting their inbound links. This is not a difficult task, there are a number of tools that allow you to check out a domains incoming links. I tend to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer, as it is easy to use and fast. SEO Book has an excellent free plugin for Firefox, the SEO Toolbar, which is excellent for find a great deal of relavent data. Finding out how your competitors are getting inbound links is a powerful tool, and can help jump start your link campaigns.
One thing that baffles the mind, is the number of people who do not use authoritative paid directories such as Yahoo!, which pass along a great deal of link juice. While the sticker price for a Yahoo Directory listing, or Business.com listing seems high, they represent excellent value. One thing to be careful of is there are literally thousands of paid directories, but most are not worth the $. Some use ‘no follow’ tags to prevent passing along any link juice, others just lack any real reputation and are the equivalent of a link in a forum or comment posting. There will be further posts outlining the Paid and Free Directories which you should consider using, but that discussion is for another time. For now, Yahoo, Business.com and BOTW are the starters picks.
Speaking of directories, far to many people who are trying to link their site either ignore the Open Directory Project, or do not know about it. The fact that inclusion can be a little like trying to figure out the secret handshake at an Elk’s Club meeting, it is still one of the links that Google places a great deal of weight behind. If at firat you do not succeed, try, try, try again. Make sure that you read their submission terms, and that you are applying for the right category. Apply every month until you get in, even if you get frustrated. Make sure that your website is complete, as there are too many site out there that jump the gun with one or two blog posts, and empty content pages or broken links. This will get you put on ignore.
One final tip for getting started building links is to try a press release, so long as it is a relavent event that you are announcing. Again, this is a premium service, that is going to cost you money. But look for a Press Distribution service that allows one or two anchored text links. This is something that can be done for a reasonable cost, and can generate significant # of inbound links.
Just to summarize, these are some basic first steps to follow and kick off your link building campaign. This is not a magic recipe, but rather a sound foundation to build your search engine optimization efforts upon.