Acquiring relevant backlinks to your website is one of the most
important parts of any Search Engine Optimization campaign. The
search engine's and especially Google value backlinks to your
website as an indicator of your website's importance. If a large
number of webmaster's have decided to link to your content then
you must be an important information hub in your target keyword
marketplace.
Link Popularity Checker
Uptimebot.com - Check your link popularity on all
major search engine's from one place
If you can manage to get a large number of links from similar or
complimentary websites that are ranked high by the search
engine's then your website should also start to climb the search
engine rankings and increase the traffic to your site. Of course
the quality of links, the anchor text of the links, the total
number of links, the content of the page your link is on, how
many outbound links are on the page, and the ranking of the page
your link is on are all extremely important factors to consider
when developing a linking strategy for your business.
When adding your links to resource directories where you have
control over your link remember to utilize all the tools you
have available to you to get the most out of the backlink to
your site.
Place your keywords in img ?alt? tags (if you have an image with
your link), link ?title? tag, and in the anchor text for your
link. You have to remember that when a search engine visits a
site that has a backlink to you that they have no idea what your
website is about yet. Of course the search engine spider will
make decisions based on it's evaluation of the webpage but you
can help them (and yourself) out by applying these simple
principles to all backlinks you have control over. If you are
submitting to a directory make sure you place your link under a
category that has your keywords in the title of the category if
possible.
You also have the option of ?buying? links to your website, a
strategy that has worked and continues to work now, but the
search engine's frown on this practice and have a tendency to
black hole websites involved in ?link farming? techniques. It's
ok to purchase advertising or to seek out strategic partnerships
for reciprocal linking of course but purchasing links for the
sole purposes of boosting your search rankings is against
Google's Terms of Service.
Trust me when I say Google can tell with pretty good accuracy
who is buying their links and who is not. It really isn't that
hard to tell and does not require that much analysis to figure
out. You can perform this type of analysis for yourself, and you
should do this to see what the competition in your market is
doing. If you do purchase links make sure these are not the only
links back to your site. The search engine's like to see a
?natural? growth to the number and quality of your backlinks.
Having a couple of high ranking links and no others is a big red
flag. Any site that grows naturally will have a pyramidal
distribution of links with the greatest number of links at or
near the bottom of the ranking ladder.
So you don't want your site to get black holed but you do want
to accelerate the rate at which your website climbs the search
engine rankings and hence see the benefits of free targeted
traffic to your website. The good news is there are several
Search Engine friendly ways to improve your link popularity:
1. Write Articles and have them published
The search engine's love content filled web pages since these
pages are providing information not just advertising. Writing
articles related to your website topic and having them published
on high ranking websites is a great first step to building your
link popularity.
You may not have traffic coming to your site yet, but these
article sites sure do. If someone likes your article a number of
these article publishing sites will allow the user to download
the article for use on their site. You are allowed to include a
resource box with your article which you would obviously use to
place a link to your website. Submit your articles to as many
article submission sites as you can, they are hungry for your
content.
http://ezinearticles.com
http://goarticles.com
http://searchwarp.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
/
2. Publish a Blog
This is a similar idea to writing articles except that you will
have total editorial control of your Blog content. Feel free to
weave in a few product and affiliate links where appropriate in
your Blog content (something many article sites frown upon).
Submit your blog to Blog and Web directories to help build the
link popularity for your blog. Make sure you link your blog to
your main website so anyone reading your Blog will be able to
find you. You can also have your Blog syndicated via RSS to
really explode your exposure. Be sure to add a resource box to
the end of each article with a link to your website so that
anyone syndicating your article via RSS will be able to find
you.
http://www.blogger.com ?
the internet's most popular blogging service
http://www.geeklog.net ?
run your own blog on your own website with this free php-mysql
package
http://www.master
newmedia.org/rss/top55/ - great listing of sites accepting
RSS/Atom feeds, or Blog submissions.
3. Submit to Web Directories
There are literally thousands of Web Directories on the internet
that will provide you a link to your site either for free, free
with a reciprocal link, or for a fee. The most useful listing to
have would be in the DMOZ.org directory which is the largest and
most respected web directory on the internet. Getting listed can
take 6-9 months if at all so you will definitely have to add
some other directory targets to your short term plans.
Yahoo! offers an express paid directory listing for $299 USD a
year which may be worth the price for your particular website.
There are also a number of Quality Free Web Directories that
should be on your to do list. Remember to submit to the most
relevant category and preferably one with your keywords in the
title and link anchor text.
http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/free-web-directories.html
- excellent listing of free web directories
http://www.dmoz.org ? the
holy grail of free directory listings
http://
docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/busexpress.html - information
on Yahoo Paid inclusion
4. Purchase links or seek out Link Partners
As long as you are continuing to build your links naturally
utilizing the techniques above you can supplement your backlink
count with a few carefully purchased links on high traffic
sites. This can give you a double benefit of helping you boost
your link popularity and also provide you a stream of traffic
from the website itself if you have targeted your purchase
correctly. If your site is about real estate, consider
purchasing links in a real estate directory that has a large
amount of traffic.
5. Post in relevant Forums
Search engine's love forums because they are moderated by humans
and have a lot of ever-changing content on them. These types of
sites are indexed regularly and can be a great place to spread
the word about your site and gain link popularity. Every time
you post your ?signature? is attached to your posting which
should contain a link to your site if you have set it up
correctly.
6. Provide valuable original content or tools on your
website
Writing articles or having unique tools that people would find
valuable on your website are great ways to build up backlinks
without having to expend effort. If you provide a great tool on
your site for free other webmasters will link up to your site
without you having to solicit them. The internet is an
information source for most people, so give them what they want.
7. Seek Out Complimentary Link Partners
If you find resources that compliment the services you offer on
your website, consider contacting the owner's of these websites
and trading links with them. Do not make these judgments based
on the site's page rank but rather focus on how relevant the
other site's content is to yours.
http://www.reciprocalman
ager.com ? excellent program to manage your links directory
Google Tools (type these into the google search form)
Allinurl: ?keywords? ? tells you all sites with
?keywords? in their site URL
Allintitle: ?keywords? ? tells you all sites
with ?keywords? in the site title tag
Allinanchor: ?keywords? ? provides a listing of
WebPages that contain ?keywords? in the anchor text of links on
those pages
Link: www.competitordomain.com ? tells you who
is linking to competitordomain. These sites may want to link
back to your site as well (also works on MSN.com ).
For Yahoo:
Linkdomain: www.competitordomain.com ? same as
link: for Google, MSN
About the author:
-----
About the Author
Michael Lawrence is
the webmaster for http://www.cobrasurf.com
providing Free Web Traffic and Free Website Promotion.
He also publishes a Blog which can be found at http://cobrasurf.blogspot.co
m containing articles on website promotion and internet
marketing.
