Developing Link Strategies for your Website

Types of link building strategy

Developing a link strategy for your website is an important step in the SEO process.

I have outlined some ways to generate links from others to your website!

Depending on how many other websites link to your business website will directly affect your link popularity.

Link popularity is a measure of how many websites pages link to your own web pages. By counting the number of pages that contain a link to your website (also called "inbound links") allows us to calculate your link popularity.

Gaining inbound links can significantly improve your search engine ranking usually allowing your site to gain better results and more traffic.

How to gain more links to your website

As part of your web optimization processes, your link building strategy is one that must be carefully developed. Requesting links from anyone is not in your best interests.

I consider it is better to have 10 quality links to your website rather than 100 poor links that do not send you visitors. Poor quality links that have no association with your type of business are in my opinion not worth the effort in securing. High quality links have repeatedly proven to send targeted traffic that is far more likely to convert into leads and sales.

Google is capable of understanding web site linking and can set filters in it's own algorithms to catch those websites who suddenly develop many links in an extremely short space of time.

By identifying websites suitable for linking to yours and then gradually developing those links is the smartest way forward.

Here are a few popular link building strategies that could bring you the results you need:

Reciprocal linking

The simplest and potentially cheapest way to generate links to your website, reciprocal linking is where you place a link on your site to a particular site and they place a link from their site to yours.

Avoid link farms where at all possible - search engines are becoming increasingly smart at identifying this type of link generation and can penalise your site if you have linked to a "bad community".

Ensure your keywords are in the text of the link to you. In the SEO world this is known as "anchor text".

For example say you sold "creative website design" as a product or service and wanted to let people know on other websites.

Your link from the reciprocal website would not want to link like this (we are using Bubble and Squeak as an example here)

Bubble and Squeak

Using your company as shown here does not advertise what you do if no-one knows who you are!

Instead your link should describe your product or service (plus benefits and features if possible) :

Highly creative website design provided professionally

Now you may not get the space on a third party website for such a long anchor text, if this is the case then you would want to use a shorter text link such as:

Creative web designer

Carefully created anchor text using your best keywords from your title, page description AND actual page content creates an important association between the site linking to you and your own website.

If possible avoid a generic links page - visitors will rarely use them. Instead focus on placing your reciprocal link in actual page content that is on the same theme as the website you are linking to. Explain the benefits of the other company if you can and ensure they do the same for your links.

If you are unable to do this then I would advise that you have your text links placed as I have done on this site below the main navigation list on each page.

Securing non-reciprocal (one way) links to your website

One way links (non reciprocal so you do not have to link back) to your website are given more importance by search engines.

Create original and interesting website content

To get them involves effort in creating original content and placing on the pages of your website. People (and search engines) like good content and will happily link to it - sometimes you will not even know they have done this as they will just quietly place a link to you.

Your site can be made a resource of useful information which will not only help brand your company and people's awareness online of you as an expert in your field but also help bring visitors back to your website which over time are more likely to convert into business.

If no-one links to your website (or you are after even more links) after you have written the content then approach others and show them the article you have written and ask if there are any articles you could write for their website.

Ensure there is a link back to your website inside the article and that can help drive more visitors to you.

Get your site listed in directories

The 2 main directories you will need to consider getting listed in are:

Yahoo Directory

and

DMOZ - The Open Directory Project

Yahoo's charges an annual fee of $299 but the link from Yahoo's main directory can boost the standing of your website far more than a dozen links from poorly ranked websites.

DMOZ Open Directory is free of charge to submit your website for a link to be considered. It is edited by human volunteers and can be difficult or take some time to get listed.

The volunteers are heavily over-worked and can find it difficult to keep up with the number of websites to be reviewed so you will have to be patient.

If your site is just a small brochure website or consists only of affiliate links its likely you will not get a listing at all. DMOZ editors like sites with original and unique content and gaining a link from DMOZ could make all the difference to your rankings in the search engines.

I submit all clients sites to DMOZ and then wait for 6 months, after that I will email an editor to request and then resubmit if they do not list the website.

What I do not do is abuse, harrass or intimidate editors into placing a link from their directory to my client's sites nor do I submit over and over again in the hope someone will notice and "push my submission to the front of the queue" - more likely my application for review would just be rejected.

Make sure your site listed is in other directories, particularly focusing on those that are relevant to your product or service. If you own a hotel ensure your site is listed in travel directories and directories on the area that your business is in. It will take time but persistence pays off in generating non reciprocal links to your website.

CALL 01793 729326 today to discuss developing links for your website

Call on 01793 729326 & see what I as an All Things Web professional could do for you

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