Link Building
Link building is one of those things that people with real jobs have trouble understanding. After all – who can possibly care or control who is linking to your site on the internet? And even more confusing is why would it matter?
However, the facts are that the links pointing back to your website are a huge factor in how Google and other search engines view your site.
So People with Real Jobs Can Understand, Please
A web link is when anything that you click on and are sent to another page on the internet. And simply put, “link building” refers to increasing the number of websites that link to your website.
A good analogy for understanding what a link is and why it’s important is to think of “inbound links” as popularity votes. So the big picture is the more links that point to your site – the better.
Why Should You Care?
You really do need to care about links to your site – because that is how Google tells how important your site is. That’s right, the number of links you have is a direct indicator of whether or not your site has any merit and should be considered more relevant to searches than other similar sites.
What do links indicate?
- Trust factor
- Relevance to a topic
- Measure of importance or interest
Without quoting statistics, everyone knows that there are billions of pages on the internet. And with many sites covering similar topics, the amount and quality of links is a good indicator of which sites are “better” than others. Of course, link building can be manipulated but it’s important to understand why it’s important.
So as an example, let’s say your site is about widgets and has 5 other sites on the internet which link to it. However, your competition’s site has been around for awhile and has more than 1,000 other sites which link to it. If you were a search engine you would have to agree that the site with 1,000 links is probably a more trusted site than the one with fewer links.
With this type of picture in mind it’s easier to understand why building links is the new arms race of the online world.
The Big Mystery…
There has been an awful lot of confusion about link building over the years, especially as internet marketers find techniques that work which are inevitably exploited. And because there is such a large effort out there to trick search engines, it’s never been more important to have a responsible link building strategy that won’t get you in trouble with search engines.
What Can You Do?
In the interest of full disclosure, link building is not easy to do properly (especially if you already have a real job) and takes time and effort. So this is not a “quick fix” type of article. Now to the hard part which is a discussion of what you can do to build links to your site.
5 Good suggestions for building links to your site:
There are lots of ways you can build links to your site and some of them are more effective than others. So while this list is by no means definitive, it is a good starting point for the average person with a real job to get their feet wet with link building:
1. Use good “anchor text” – If you get the opportunity to create links to your site, avoid naming the link something generic likemysite.com. Instead focus on using words that describe your business as the text in the links. For instance, if you sold custom widgets consider asking for links that says Find Custom Widgets with that phrase linking to your site.
2. Content syndication – content syndication is a powerful strategy and refers to the process of creating new “content” that is shared in various places on the internet. A simple example would be a news article. If you post a news article that others publish on their site that content becomes syndicated – meaning the original source is cited and the material remains unchanged.
Good syndication strategies include:
- Blog sharing on social sites
- Twitter posts
- Article marketing
- News & Press release marketing
- Podcasts
- Slide sharing
3. Directories – there are lots of good directories out there like the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ just to name a few. Directories are great ways of building links especially if you can get listed in directories that cover topics related to your website.
4. Bookmarking – There are lots of great websites out there such as Digg and Stubmleupon where people go to share their favorites or bookmarks with other web users. These are great ways of building links especially if you have something really interesting on your site such as a news item, blog post or picture.
5. Ask for links from associates and business partners – If you are a member of an organization such as the Chamber or Better Business Bureau ask them what it will take to get a link to your website from their websites. Also, you should be asking your customers or people you do business with to add links to your website whenever possible.
If this sounds complicated that’s ok – you’re not alone.
Link building is one of those things that is tough for people with real jobs to do effectively. The reason – it takes time and there are no shortcuts.
Sure you can respond to those spam emails about services that will create thousands of links overnight to your site. But then don’t be surprised if Google bans you!
Depending on your situation, if may make sense to consider outsourcing this part of your website marketing program to a professional. But before you jump with the first one you find, ask them these questions about the “how” and “why” to make sure they will do the job properly.
Call WSI today for a free link building consultation. We can help you understand how this fits in with your overall internet marketing strategy.
Article by: Andre' Savoie / Copyright 2010 / All rights reserved