Build a strong link profile for your website

Links are an essential but often overlooked factor when it comes to online marketing.

Whether your website is just starting out, or even if it has some maturity, it’s well worth regularly reviewing the state of your link health. Having a strong profile of quality, relevant inbound links will do wonders for your visibility, helping you to rank well in search engine results as well as driving traffic directly to your site.

Get those links

Some popular ways to get inbound links include:

Directory Submissions

There are still some prominent directories where you can submit your website link. Some of these, such as the Open Directory (DMOZ) and Yahoo Directory are also used by the main search engines, plus there are many industry-specific and business directories in the UK. Some leading directories request a reciprocal link or charge for a listing, either as a one-off fee or a recurring annual charge. However, there are many directories that still offer free listings, although as each submission is checked by a human editor, these submissions may take some weeks, or months, to be accepted.

Requests for Links from other websites

Find a relevant website, find the right contact and make your request. It’s usually polite to send the link code out with your request. Some sites will link out to other relevant sites for free. However, most will want to charge and some will want a reciprocal link. If you are paying for your link, get some assurance about traffic to the other website first. Link building this way can be a very labour intensive method, so be prepared for the long haul.

Forums and Blogs

The key to using these channels successfully is relevance. Only post blog comments which relate to the overall theme of the blog. Otherwise, attempts to promote websites in this way can have negative effects.

Similarly, forums will not appreciate obvious promotional comments which do not contribute to the discussion threads. But if you have something relevant and useful to say, a signature link may be all that’s needed to send some traffic through.

RSS Feeds and Syndication

If you can write original, informative and readable copy on topical issues, then other websites and feeds may be interested in carrying your articles and content. As the author, links to your biography and/ or your site are normally offered.

Press Releases

Press releases can be very successful in the online environment too. Well written copy can drive relevant traffic to your website for a specific promotion, or even counter negative publicity. You can read more about Press Releases on our website.

What not to do…

Indiscriminate links are not advisable – poor quality links, such as those bought from link farms, will do nothing to enhance your quality ranking with search engines or drive relevant traffic to your site. There is also some debate about the value of buying text links and whether Google can identify and penalise these.

Other points to remember:

• Text links are the best option, with the text of the link being a relevant keyword or phrase that relates to your site content.
• As well as providing link value, good links can also attract additional visitors so make sure your links in point to relevant content on your website. You might get visitors initially but they won’t hang around and may not ever return,
• Do not use spam techniques to request links by email or spam blogs: you want to promote your site not get blacklisted, or worse…

Link building is an ongoing task since other websites will come and go and so do their links to your site. At Web Search Workshop UK we can help you with link building campaigns and Press Release services, so please contact us now to find out more.

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