Getting Links To Your Website

In order to keep searchers happy, search engines are always developing ways to make their results more relevant. In the last couple of years, links have become increasingly more important to the engines because they see links as an endorsement of your site by other Web sites. Think about it for a minute: Would you link to a site you didn't like?

This concept is referred to as "link popularity." Based on the links pointing to
your site at others with the same interests can find them.

Here are the 7 ways getting links to your site :

1) Social Media Linking

You've heard all about Digg and Del.icio.us and may even be participating in these social media networks to promote your site. The problem with some of the social media big guns is you must evaluate who is using these sites, whether or not they are your target audience and therefore whether or not a time-intensive social media strategy will pay off for you.

There is another option, however, and that is tapping into one of the growing number of niche social media sites instead. For example, ThisNext is a shopping recommendation site for products of all kinds. It's driven by visitor recommendations, each of whom tag their favorite products with various keywords so that others with the same interests can find them.


So, for example, if your company has a product to market you can set up your own ThisNext account, pick a few of your products, tag them, throw in your company URL and then hook up with others who share your tags. As long as you are providing good information (as opposed to self promotion) this is a viable strategy. Other examples of topical social sites are DealBundle, wherein users collaborate on finding the best deals by store or product, and fashion-specific social shopping site StyleHive.

2) Make sure your site is worth a link.

This means your site must offer something of value to entice other sites to link to yours.

If all your site does is sell products or services, you need to get busy creating some additional linkable content. Examples of linkable content include how-to articles, product reviews, tools, tips and so on. Creating content can be tough, but if you don't have some on your site already, you've got to do it. Adding linkable content not only will encourage others to link to your site, but it will improve the overall quality of your site for your visitors.

Make it easy on yourself by writing about something you know that relates to your site. This column is a perfect example. It teaches without trying to sell something. The best part of creating linkable content is that if you do it well enough, you will find that people will link to your site without you even asking, and that's the easiest way to build links.

You're not a writer? You can always add free tools or free downloads. Also, consider creating a links page prior to requesting a link trade with a site. You can usually expect a better reception from a potential link partner if they can see where you will place the link to their site.

3) Get Your Product or Service Reviewed by other Websites

Have you published an e-book or written software? Then offer a free copy to websites whose themes are similar to yours. If they write and publish a review, then you will get a link back to your site. In addition, you can publish their reviews on your own site, which will add a lot of weight to your own claims about the validity of your product or service. Look around for sites in your field and make your offer. In the process you will also build potentially important alliances.

4) Get your site listed in directories relevant to your particular product or service

There are many resource directories that serve particular areas of interest. If you offer software that would be helpful to webmasters, for example, then do a search for webmaster resource directories and you will find sites where you can add your URL. Do you have a hotel? Then, find travel directories, and apply to be listed. You will have to spend time, but once again persistence will pay off, not only in improvement of your page rank but listing in specific industry or product oriented directories will bring you targeted traffic-people particularly interested in what you have to offer.

5) Link Analytics

There are hundreds of tools out there that allow you analyze and assess your link building efforts and tactics. This site offers a directory to 136 of the most popular ones. Useful tools to be aware of are those that enable you to:

• Analyze the inbound links and outbound links of your site and your competitors' sites;
• Assess the quality of a site to determine if it is worth going after for a link;
• List your inbound links according to each search engine;
• Analyze the text of said inbound links to make sure it is keyword rich;
• Find the valuable .edu, .gov and .org inbound links to your site;
• Compare the link popularity of your site to that of any other site; etc.

6) Forums

There are a multitude of discussion forums on the internet. If you post to a forum and include a link to your website you get an inbound link instantly. Some website administrators will go onto forums simply to post a reply to a message with a ‘yes, I agree with what that other person wrote’ and may thereby get an inbound link. Posting to forums is a simple and effective way of getting inbound links, but if you post nonsense, then very few internet users will follow any of the links to your website.

7) Widget Linking

Create a useful widget, which is an applet or tool that performs some kind of task or function, and embed your site's link in it. Offer it to the public at no charge, and hundreds or even thousands of sites may pick it up and put it to use on their sites.
This tactic was employed with enormous success by Lee Odden of SEO/SEM consulting firm TopRank Online Marketing and the highly influential Online Marketing Blog. He created two widgets: an RSS Button Maker and a Social Bookmarks Creator. Both are quite handy tools that streamline their respective processes.

At the time of writing, these tools were in use by over 80,000 blogs, many of which link back to his blog because of the link to his site embedded into the code. As a matter of fact, Yahoo! Site Explorer reported 408,593 inbound links to his 2 1/2 year old blog. We are deeply jealous. BTW, you can have a developer create your widget or you can explore one of the many widget creation-enabling sites out there like yourminis.com. Just make sure a link back to your site is embedded into the code.