Participate in social networking – forums and blogs, especially if your site is relatively new and/or unknown.
Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it. If you offer long-lasting, unique and compelling content — something that lets your expertise shine — people will want to recommend it to others.
Create compelling content.
… think of issues or problems your users might encounter. Visitors are likely to appreciate your site and link to it if you publish a short tutorial or a video providing a solution, or a practical tool. Survey or original research results can serve the same purpose, if they turn out to be useful for the target audience.” and “Offering a number of solutions for different problems could evolve into a blog which can continuously affect the site’s reputation in a positive way.
but lower quality directories can be avoided as being of limited value. Make sure directories you submit to are on target, moderated, and well structured. And avoid mass directory submission services as they’re “mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes.”
It’s important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site’s reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they’re likely to have no positive impact on your site’s performance over time. If your site’s visibility in the Google index is important to you it’s best to avoid them.
Note that “randomly exchanging links” is not the same thing as reciprocal link building we do for our clients as part of our link building services at Rank Magic. Exchanging links with other web sites that are related to yours and relevant to visitors on your web site are fine, effective ways to gain good incoming links. Avoid reciprocal links with every Tom, Dick or Harry who sends you a spammy linking request via email. Once in a blue moon those may be okay, but most are garbage and won’t help you a bit.
Make it easy for people to bookmark you on social sites.
Finally, consider making linking to your site easier for less tech savvy users. Similar to the way we do it on YouTube, offering bookmarking services for social sites like Twitter or Facebook can help spread the word about the great content on your site and draw users’ attention.
We typically recommend our clients include Share buttons in addition to the normal social media Follow buttons most sites include. They make it super-easy for readers to share your pages. We have these floating along the left edge of this post. If you participate in any social networking sites (Facebook, Delicious, etc.) we’d love it if you’d use our button to share our blog.
If you found this helpful, please share with the buttons on the left or the Click-to-Tweet above.
Your thoughts and opinions are welcome. Join the discussion in comments below.
Surely your business isn’t really “plain vanilla”. But you may have a business with lots of competitors who all do much the same thing. Such are businesses like car repair shops, business coaches, web designers, florists, and so forth.
If you want the search engines to recognize that your business and website are worthy of a prominent in their search results, you can’t just have your website list what you do. That’s not enough to set yourself apart from your competitors. You need some compelling information to encourage other businesses in your niche to link to you.
Blog articles or White Papers that explain things or provide How-To information are great for setting your website apart from your competitors. And they make your web site a more valuable resource to your visitors. To the extent they can figure out what website provides more value, the search engines will reward that with higher ranking.
What to ask a website designer before you decide to hire them
Your Old Appliance: Repair or Replace?
5 Secrets to choosing a high-end caterer
Why all florists are not alike
Beyond providing value to your visitors and having the search engines realize that, these articles can help your link authority. That’s important, as we believe that your inbound link profile accounts for about 40% of where you rank in Google.
These articles may prompt other similar (but non-competing) businesses to provide links to your material. They’re sometimes referred to as “link bait” – helpful information others will want visitors on their own sites to know about. If they like what you’ve written, they may link to your article. Otherwise they may have little or no reason to link to you.
If you’re not sure you can write compelling articles like these, ask us how a copywriter can help. We’re not copywriters, but we work with several and can make recommendations for you.
Outbound links to quality content are good not only for the site being linked to, but also for the site doing the linking.
Many people are reluctant to link to other web sites, for fear the visitor may not return to the original site, and for the fear that outbound links can drain Link Authority.
To keep from losing your visitors to an external web site, you can simply set up the outbound link to open in a new tab or a new window. Then if your visitor closes that window or tab, Bada-Bing! — they’re right back on your site where they were before they left.
As for draining your Authority, that simply doesn’t happen. And if you choose your outbound link target pages on relevance to your own content and on the quality of their content, then according to Matt Cutts (“The Google Guy”), Google’s going to reward you. [Update: Matt is no longer with Google.]
Basically, Google (as well as other search engines) wants to reward web sites that provide value to their visitors. And if your pages contain links to highly valued content that’s relevant to your visitors’ interests, Google reflects that in their opinion of your site’s value.
Link building is essential to good rankings in the search engines. The number and quality of other web sites that link to yours builds your link authority, and that affects your rankings. Especially in Google. While reciprocal links (you link to me and I link back to you) are excellent to have, one-way links are even more powerful. One excellent way to get such links is through article marketing.
Articles can make good inbound links
Webmasters are always in need of good, relevant content for their web sites. Do you have well-written articles about your area of expertise in one of the several article repositories on the web? If so, your articles will be found, picked up, and reprinted on other web sites. When those webmasters use your article they almost always include your own “About The Author” blurb at the end of the article. A blurb in which you just happen to include a link to your web site.
There’s no reason you can’t include such articles on your own web site, of course. But the links from marketing articles on other related web sites are what you’re really after here.
It’s essential that your articles not be commercials for you; they need to be useful and informative, with information that readers will find valuable. There are two very selfish reasons for this. First, articles that tout your products or services are least likely to be picked up for inclusion on anyone else’s web site. And second, a great article with lots of informative content is more likely to entice a reader to click on your link at the bottom and visit your web site.
If you have something unique to say about what you do and have expertise in, consider article marketing to get your name out there — along with a link to your website.
Need a little help?
Not all of us are capable of writing compelling articles that can both inform and entertain, but don’t let that stop you. We work with some excellent copywriters who can “ghost write” articles for you. The ideas, of course, have to be yours, but the words can be crafted by someone who specializes in that. Some of the copywriters we’re familiar with and can recommend include Anne Lazo of Eagle Soars Consulting, Scott Stadler of Words By Design, Chris Reardon of Reardon Commmunications, and Lisa Fahoury of Fahoury Ink.
Many web site owners understand how essential incoming links to their web site are for good search engine rankings. We wrote an article for Entrepreneur Magazine on the subject. What’s not so widely understood is the impact that outbound links on your site can have on your rankings.
Outbound Links Influence Search Engines
Other web sites that you link to affect the “neighborhood” of your web site. If you link to online gambling web sites, the search engines will be more likely to think your web site is related to gambling. If you link to unsavory “spammy” web sites then search engines might think that your web site is also search engine spam.
Links to link farms and automated linking systems can actually hurt your rankings in Google and we believe also in Yahoo, MSN [now Bing], and other major search engines. That’s why it’s always important to evaluate other web sites before you link to them.
Outbound Links Influence Visitors to Your Web Site
The web sites you link to establish the larger context of your web site for your visitors. If you link to high quality sites with useful content, visitors to your site will associate you with those high quality sites.
You need to link to good, solid web sites with valuable information; that demonstrates that your web site can be trusted. You wouldn’t send visitors to other pages if they could find negative information about your products or services. And you shouldn’t send visitors to other pages that they will find offensive, amateurish, or a waste of their time. That’s because all of those negative feelings will generalize back to your site and to your products and services.
Good links add value to your web site, they show your visitors that you have nothing to hide and that you have confidence in yourself.
What Goes Around Comes Around
Don’t worry about losing visitors by providing links to other pages. Links to other pages that provide real value will bring you more and repeat customers. Everyone’s going to leave your web site sooner or later. No matter how compelling your web site is, no one’s going to stay there forever. But where do they go when they leave your site?
If you don’t have outgoing links, then your visitors are likely to go back to the search engine they came from (where they may continue to search and find your competitors). If you offer your web site visitors good outbound links, you can send leaving visitors to other web sites that can send you their visitors in return.
One technique to try is to set up your outbound links so they open in a new browser window or tab. That way, visitors who follow those links still have a web browser window or tab pointing to your site, so when they finish with the other site, they’re still connected to your site. For an example of that, click on this link to see all of my posts about linking.
Carefully chosen links to outside resources can improve the experience of visitors who visit your web site. The better that experience, the more likely they are to return. And the more they return, the more likely they are to end up a paying customer.
We welcome your thoughts in the Comments section below.
oogle’s Webmaster Central has a helpful article on best practices for quality link building. Here are a few of the main points we found particularly relevant.
Can your business benefit from link bait?
Webmasters are always in need of good, relevant content for their web sites. Do you have well-written articles about your area of expertise in one of the several article repositories on the web? If so, your articles will be found, picked up, and reprinted on other web sites. When those webmasters use your article they almost always include your own “About The Author” blurb at the end of the article. A blurb in which you just happen to include a link to your web site.
It’s essential that your articles not be commercials for you; they need to be useful and informative, with information that readers will find valuable. There are two very selfish reasons for this. First, articles that tout your products or services are least likely to be picked up for inclusion on anyone else’s web site. And second, a great article with lots of informative content is more likely to entice a reader to click on your link at the bottom and visit your web site.
