Linking is an important
part of your overall online marketing plan. The number one rule is
to create quality inbound links not just quantity links. So
now you know the secret. It is to link to quality sites that offer
quality content that your visitors will be interested in.
Its even more important to get those sites to link back to your site.
The only way that will happen is to have quality content on your site.
You don’t just want links , you want links that will drive traffic to
your site. Linking is an ongoing commitment you have to employ on a
regular basis.
Implementing a successful
linking strategy requires:
-
Finding out who links
to your competitors
-
Listing sites you
would like to link to. That is to have a hit list of sites to
target.
-
Ensuring your site,
or a specific page is link friendly and designed to take links.
-
Linking to other
sites and requesting inbound links to your site.
- Continually monitoring and reviewing
your linking
Primary Benefits
The primary benefits in increasing the number of
links to your site are:
- The more sites that you link to the more traffic you can
expect. People find nearly as many sites by following links as they do using search
engines. Well placed links on quality web sites are great traffic generators.
- More search engines will now rank your pages higher when you
have many links to your web site. Most search engines give a
ranking boost to sites that have incoming links from quality related
sites.
- The more links to your site, the more ways search engine
spiders have of finding you.
- Linking helps to build trust. If
visitors see that a popular or even a respected site links to yours,
they will be more inclined to trust your
site and what you offer will be viewed more favourably.
- Linking is also a way of providing your
visitors with other additional relevant
information they may be interested in, without you having to reinvent
the wheel.
Link Friendly
Create a link friendly
site by having a particular page designed to allow visitors to create a
link ( subject to approval) and to allow you to link to them. As an
example link to us to go
to our reciprocal linking page.
Which links you accept should be motivated by links that will be of real
benefit to your visitors. Reciprocal links should only be given
where there is a relevance between the sites. Avoid links just for
the sake of links
Link Popularity Tips
- The more links you have to your site the better.
However, it is not the number of links that are important but rather
the quality of the sites that are linking to your site.
- Try to link from high link popularity sites to improve
search engine ranking.
- Include keywords in the linking text wherever
possible. Some search engines will boost rankings when this occurs.
Finding Partners
Look for sites that are related to your
business but are not direct competitors. For example if you sold bulk pet
food it would be useful to link to a pet store (selling pets) and they
could link back to you. In this situation the two business compliment each
other and both could profit from the linking.
It is also useful to look at each of the
sites "listed" on the link pages of competitor and related
websites. After studying these links it would be beneficial to contact the
best ones to request reciprocal linking. That can be a laborious exercise.
Alternatively you can use software. One such option would be to
visit check your link
popularity.
Enter details of your competitors web address and you will be shown your
competitors links.
To find a whole range of sites to link to
and manage, maintain and monitor your linking you can use software from
Arelis. More details regarding this software and a link to download a free version
of the program is available by clicking on the link.
Improve Link Popularity
Contact the Webmaster of a site that is complementary but
not competitive to yours. Asking them to link to your site is not enough. To
be successful you need to outline the advantages of linking to your site.
You should create a link to their site on your link page and
make mention of it in your contact mail to the webmaster of the site you
want to link with. Most will refuse
to link unless they are convinced that they will receive more traffic than what they send
you.
In your email to the webmaster request a reciprocal link back to your site
and provide a link (URL) to where they can obtain easily downloadable
information and a link for them to include on their site. For example
see our linking information page.
Follow Up
Now you need to check back periodically
with the sites you targeted to see if they have linked to your site.
If after sat four weeks no link has been added then you should contact
them by email again and make mention of the previous email regarding a reciprocal
link. If after a further four weeks nothing has happened then do
not contact the webmaster
Other Linking Processes
Free for all (FFA) pages are pages that link back to the
last 50, 100 or whatever web sites that submitted to their free for all page. The
problem with this service is that there are so many incoming requests that your link
may be dropped in a few days or a few hours. Not considered to be a quality linking methods.
Research into Bulk Submitters using a software program to
submit links suggests that they do not improve link popularity in relation to search
engines.
Reciprocal Link Services are where every member agrees to
maintain a page on their site that links to every other member of the link network.
If you do not update the links page with new members periodically then your web site is
dropped. Hence the drawback with this system is you have to upload a new links page
to your web site once or twice a month. Not considered to be a quality linking
method.
What Not To Do
- Do not link to sites you think your visitors would
not be interested in.
- Do not exchange links with sites that are full of
links only. These are also know as link farms.
- Do not harass webmasters who do not reply to your
email requests. Send a second email if they do not respond. If you
receive no response within two weeks they will probably never
respond.
Remember
- You want to boost your ranking with search
engines and linking is an important part of it.
- You want to link to quality sites and have your site
linked by them.
- Link building is not an overnight process.
- Link building is a costly process in time and effort,
but if done correctly it will be worth the cost in the long run.
What We Do
There are a number of features that you
need to consider in a good reciprocal link service. Based on your objectives we will
rate and review the critical success features of any link service.
We can create a range of
contact emails to assist you in your linking efforts or actually assist you
in getting more links.
Want to Link To Our Site
If
you want to link to our site click on the button below
If you want to Do
It Yourself
check out our special DIY page for useful
links to software.
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