Many small businesses start their websites and put a
"Links" page up as one of their first few pages—thinking
that this will help them rank better.
While it's a nice gesture to link to your vendors,
associates, resources, and products you like—and your
customers may even find this page helpful or
interesting—having a links page alone won't help your
website to rank better.
Instead, You Want Your Website to Be Like A Prom Queen
That's not to say you want your website to wear a sparkly
dress or a shiny tiara or make a sappy acceptance speech.
Instead, the way your website should resemble a prom queen
is more about the election process. Prom queen election
results aren't based on strategy, marketing,
qualifications, or campaign speeches—as much as they are on
popularity.
Just as with prom queens, your small business's website's
search engine ranking results are about popularity. It's
not the links on your site that contribute to raising your
ranking but the links coming into your site from other
sites that help you to rank better.
But getting links coming into my website is harder than
just putting links on my site!
That's the whole point. The search engines don't want to
make it easy for you to come up at the top. If that were
the case, they'd have a whole mess of under-qualified
websites at the top of the rankings, just because those
site owners had the time to add pages and pages of links to
their site.
The search engines want to make sure that only the best
sites, with the most relevant content, show at the top of
their listings. How they do that is by looking just at the
"hard stuff"—things like well-written content and good
coding—and then making sure that those sites have
good-quality links coming in from other sites.
What constitutes a good quality link?
If what you need is links coming into your site, then does
that mean you should find every directory site you can and
get your site listed? Or that you should use a website
link-building service that guarantees to get your link on a
bunch of sites for a low price?
Those strategies give you a lot of incoming links, but it's
not so much about quantity as it is about the quality of
those links. The search engines base your site's popularity
partially on the popularity of the other sites pointing to
it. Having the New York Times link to your site is a lot
more valuable than garnering attention from Bob's Shrimp
Shack.
So, how do you get these valuable links?
Link strategies that can help your website come up well
include:
Offering articles for publication on other websites. If you
require sites publishing your articles to link back to your
site, you'll wind up with many incoming links—which is
great. You may even find guest author opportunities on a
recurring basis, which can get several links back to your
site instead of just one. Putting out a press release. If
it leads to an article, then a newspaper or magazine will
probably put the article on its website. If the article
includes a link to your site, that will help your rankings.
Putting your link on your partner's sites. If you regularly
work with other businesses, they may be willing to exchange
links with you. This makes sense, and it gets a link back
to your site. However, I don't recommend you exchange links
with every company that comes your way—that will just make
your site look unfocused and unprofessional. Exchanging
only with companies directly related to yours will help
your customers and your ranking.
Taking advantage of link opportunities with professional
organizations. If you belong to a professional organization
such as the Chamber of Commerce or another organization
that offers an online membership directory, be sure to get
your link listed there. It's often a membership benefit
that can be overlooked. Commenting on blogs and listing
your website. If you have relevant, interesting comments,
posting them on other professional blogs and referencing
your business website can help raise your ranking. Starting
a blog and linking to your site from your posts. This may
sound a bit like cheating, but as long as you make sure
that your blog contains high-quality information as well as
links back to your site, it can pay off in a big way with
both search engines and visitors.
Even if you only take a few of these steps, you'll increase
the number of incoming links to your site and your site's
perceived popularity. And, this will increase your chances
of being elected "prom queen" and wearing the sparkly tiara
of a high ranking on the search engines.
----------------------------------------------------
Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big
visibility for small businesses. As the owner of elf
design, Erin is passionate about helping her clients stand
out in front of their competition and attract more clients.
One of the best ways to do that is with Search Engine
Optimization, which you can learn about in her eLearning
product, Raise Your Ranking, which is available at
http://www.howtoraiseyourranking.com .
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