I recently completed a massive ten part series on building links … the proper way. I am going to post a quick summary of things that you can do in order to build links to your home page and sub pages that are completely “white hat”. In other words, links that Google will love and (hopefully) cherish.
- Submit to the Yahoo! Directory ($299.00 fee)
- Submit to DMOZ and perform sacrifices to the “ODP God” to get your site listed (think Local listing here)
- Contact people you know, business partners both new and old, friends, customers, neighbors, family, suppliers, etc. and ask for a link or agree on a reciprocal link. Now, before you do this, understand that each request needs to be hand crafted and give a benefit to them. State your “points of difference” and why linking to you would be worthwhile for their visitors. Note: Just don’t agree to be listed on a page with dozens of other non-related companies or one that looks, breathes, and walks like a link farm.
- Find good quality sites with great content and link to them. While this won’t always happen, if your site has good traffic, they should see some referral traffic from you. The good webmasters out there will look at their log files, see the referral traffic and then give you a link. You’re benefiting your visitors anyway, and this can also open the door to a good cross-relationship with another webmaster.
- Write articles and submit them to the main article databases and social networking sites.
- Do a review of a product or service (as a testimonial) and send it to the company. Most will include it on their site and include a link to your site. If the testimonial is real good you could wind up on the home page.
- Write and submit a press release of value. Emphasis on VALUE.
- Look at link building as a way to build your traffic from referrals instead of as an increase in PageRank. Focusing just on PageRank is marketing with blinders on. Look at the big picture. If the search engines went away tomorrow how would people find sites? Word of mouth? Yes. Advertising? Yes. Recommendations (links) from other sites? Bingo.
What NOT to do
- Don’t send out a mass email telling people how cool your site is and for them to link to it. No one cares and you are spamming whether you care to admit to it or not.
- Don’t write content just to write content. Have a purpose.
- Beware of “link baiting” and ensure your purpose is clear and ethical.
There you go … some good tips for you and link building for your site. While I realize that most will complain about writing content that it is hard and takes a lot of time, the payoff is huge. If you can’t write, find someone who does, and make sure they can write close to the style in which you talk … as it will lend to stronger followings and higher conversions.
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