Now more than ever, if you want to be a successful business
owner, you need a successful business website. Which means
you have to make nice with the search engines. And the
long-standing rule of search engine friendliness is to
create inbound links -- links from other sites pointing to
your site.
Ten-ish years ago, when Google started the shift away from
code to content (including inbound links) as the preferred
way of determining "relevance," the world changed.
Immediately, businesses owners started scrambling, and
begging, for every link they could get. Thank goodness
that's not the case anymore! But inbound links are still
important. In many ways they're more vital than ever.
How then, does one go about getting those precious nuggets
of hypertext anchor tagging? Social Media maven and "Chief
Nut" Kevin Skarritt, our good friend and strategic ally at
Acorn Creative, offered up these 10 strategies on his "Nuts
and Bolts of Brand" blog. Good guy that he is, he gave us
permission to share those key linking strategies with you
here. Hit it!
1. BLOG COMMENTS
Go out of your way to read other people's blogs. Your
Mother always told you that reading is good for you. She
was right! But, when you do so, be sure to productively
interact with those bloggers. It makes them feel good. It
validates what they're writing about. It starts up a
relationship between the two of you. AND, here's the best
part, it gives you an inbound link to your site.
2. BLOG TRACKBACKS
Start your own blog and refer to all of those blogs you're
reading in the form of a "trackback" in your posts. Don't
know what this means? Check out the entry for "trackback"
on Wikipedia, or go deeper with a Wordpress.org tutorial.
However you learn more about this linking strategy, please
do, because it's a smart, easy, and effective way to get
your website lots of inbound links.
3. PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING
Yes, PPC advertising is indeed an added marketing expense.
However, it's a controllable, predictable means to build
ROI, and a great way to build inbound links where you have
control over the text used in the link tag.
4. PARTICIPATE ON INDUSTRY FORUMS
Similar to blog comments and trackbacks, participating on
industry forums will get you hooked up with other
like-minded professionals, keep you abreast of current
trends, and you get to build your own inbound links in the
signature line of your posts.
5. BUILD OTHER PAGES
Some new social networking sites on the web allow you to
create content and post it in their domain as new pages.
One great example of this is Seth Godin's Squidoo.com. By
creating "lenses" that focus readers on a particular topic
of interest, you get to engage readers and create more
inbound links to your main site.
6. WIKIS
The concept of a wiki (like wikipedia.org) is that readers
also become content contributors. Anyone who is registered
can log in and change content. Understand that other
readers of this information-rich content have zero
tolerance for salesy/advertising tactics, so, be careful
with this one. Be purely informative and helpful with your
newly posted content. If the content survives peer
scrutiny, you'll have a nice little inbound link that's
potentially seen by millions.
7. SOCIAL NETWORKING
MySpace and FaceBook for sure, but there's an explosion of
social networking web sites out there. Dive in and start
participating. Doing so allows you to interact with other
professionals and, you guessed it, builds up inbound links.
8. SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
Different than social networking, social bookmarking is
similar to how you used to bookmark sites in your browser
but, instead, you bookmark your favorite sites publically,
in sites like de.licio.us, ma.gnolia.com, spurl.com,
rojo.com, Google bookmarks ... the list goes on and on.
The goal is to have people discover these bookmarks, and
then your site. An added benefit to social bookmarking (and
blog posts) is you get to "tag" your content with words and
phrases that are relevant to the content. These tags are
used to identify the content in the search process.
9. ORGANIZED SURFING SITES
This is a variation of social bookmarking. There are sites
that organize how people surf the web in an effort to make
the process of finding the right content faster and more
focused. StumbleUpon.com (available as a Firefox plugin) is
one of my favorites but others like Technorati (blog
content), Digg (blogs, articles and news stories) and
newcomer Trailfire (another Firefox plugin) allow users to
power-surf, finding your site via inbound links.
10. LINK BEGGING
Don't discount it just yet. Asking another site owner for a
link sometimes still works. However, with all of the other
options listed above, you'll quickly learn that this tactic
is largely time-consuming and unproductive.
Any good car salesman will recite the old adage, "plan your
work and work your plan." This especially holds true for
your inbound link strategy. Whether you focus on one or set
up a tactic to diversify, divide and conquer, don't wait.
The success of your website -- and ultimately, your
business -- depends on it!
----------------------------------------------------
(c) 2007 Epiphanies, Inc. As the "Content Lovers" of
Epiphanies Inc., Lani & Allen Voivod help lifestyle
entrepreneurs and bold-thinking small businesses "A-Ha
Themselves" in fun and profitable ways. If you'd like to
see the FREE report that generated over six figures of
additional client work in less than two months, you can
check it out at http://www.GoNutsin2007.com !
No comments:
Post a Comment