Linking Strategies
Search engines rank based on popularity, a measurement of popularity can be based on how many quality sites link to your web location. By increasing your inbound links, you increase your site's overall accessibility, popularity and traffic — it is like hitting three birds with one stone.
Why focus on inbound links?
In any web-based business, getting a lot of quality traffic is the ultimate objective. Increasing the number of links pointing into your site can increase your traffic in more than one way. First, with proper linking, you will receive relevant traffic coming from the sites which have links to yours. Secondly, note that search engines such as Google and Yahoo! base site relevance on the number of quality links that points into a site. The more sites you have linked, the more relevant your site appears to be and the more chances you have to increase your search engine rankings.
Relevant Linking Strategies
Various strategies that you can use to increase inbound links, some of which are as follows:
- Resource Links or Link Requests. Do not hesitate to solicit links to vendors and potential partners for your business. However, ask for links only on the best sites which is very closely related to your niche. Focus efforts on relevant sites that will bring you the quality traffic that you want. Find quality sites that compliment your services/products.
- Links from Directories and Search Engines. Acquire links from human directories such as Yahoo! and Open Directory Project (DMOZ). This may take some time to bear fruit, but it will be worth it to wait it out — sites listed in top directories are considered to be very relevant by search engines. Be careful that you accurately submit your site in the right category and make sure that you add in a key-word rich description of your site.
- Links from Press Releases. SEO press releases is a linking strategy, and has proven to be very effective. Linking to your URL will secure links in news sites and will effectively advertise your company's services. More importantly, you are providing relevant information to people who are searching for news that is related to your niche, and this will increase relevant traffic into your site. However, you need to make sure that your press release is actually news-worthy and merits the attention of journalists and the media.
- Links from Discussion Threads, Forums and Newsletters. Participation within the social media whether it be informative related articles for industry-related zines, online forums, discussion boards, or a newsletter all impact the traffic. As always, focus only on niche-related site and forums. This strategy does a lot for your branding and corporate image. Unfortunately with anything that is good requires a commitment to time and effort.
- First-rate content. Create quality content and tools for your site that will inspire people to bookmark and actually link to your site. To establish long term link popularity, make sure that your site offers interesting and information-rich content, as well as features that are truly valuable to your audience. Offer only the best content, information and service — besides, these is what your site should be all about, in the first place.
Linking is a part of the process of optimization that must be performed continuously. In our package I will introduce a linking strategy that will focus on developing quality.
