Lets talk about link building.
There are 5 questions that are often asked in relation to link building – why, where, who, how and what?
Why build links to my site
You build links for two primary reasons – gain additional traffic, people do click through links to your site and incoming links are, most likely, the single most important factor in gaining trust and authority with Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Trust and authority is essential for your position in the search engine results pages, without these inbound links the website that you lovingly created will never succeed in gaining traction or probably enough visitors to survive.
Who should build my links?
Ideally, you would do it yourself or have it done by someone in-house, but it does take time to do it properly, nowadays its not possible to plonk your site on a few free directories and wait for the punters to come knocking. There are companies that specialise in link building, but be selective, there are many many who will have your money and give back nothing, more on this later!
Where should I ask for links?
The first thing you need to do is fairly obvious..THINK, you need to look for the best opportunities, probably sites that are symbiotic / relevant to yours but probably not those in direct competition. If you are servicing a local area perhaps finding other websites not directly related to your business but in your locality would be good.
Where else can I get links?
Become a member of blog or forum communities related to your business or area of interest. Nowadays, many of these places put a “nofollow” tag on your link which means the search engines will not pass on any credit to your site, however, the link can still generate traffic to your website! Social Media or Web 2.0 also offers a new way to get attention and links to your website – Twitter, although your opportunity is usually only short lived, Facebook might offer you the demographics you need, use social bookmarks like Delcious or Reddit to draw attention to special offers, new pages or posts, you never know, traffic may follow along.
How do I find good link partners?
Start with the easy ones, perhaps existing companies you partner with or suppliers you use, perhaps some of your customers? If you can call them up, alternatively send a personalised email or letter. Look at who your competitors are linking to, going to Yahoo and typing link:www.competitor.co.uk will show you where they are getting their links from, there are numerous tools and ways of finding links, to be discussed later. Some fairly obvious places include Yellow pages, Thompson directories – online or paper, go to the chamber of commerce sites, there are usually a list of members with contact details.
How do I link?
Whats important here is the piece of text that is linked through to your pages, its called the anchor text. Use your keyphrases / keywords relevant to the page you are sending them to, for instance if you offer search engine optimization services you might use search engine optimization or SEO as the anchor text, if you sell clothes made from organic cotton, you might use organic clothing as the anchor. Try to vary your anchor texts as the search engines, it appears place a lot of emphasis on these.
SEO and linkbuilding is not an art or science, it sort of treads the boundary between the two. There is a wealth of information on this site and all around the web. We would be pleased to discuss any aspects of Smith and W-Smiths SEO and linkbuilding services with you. Get in touch. Good luck.
