Another clever cost-free way of enticing the spiders and driving traffic to your website is through the power of linking to other sites; not any old sites, but sites specifically related to your topic. Take the trouble to sniff them out by undertaking some basic research. Try this out for size at the Google.com search engine: ‘your topic + websites’ and again ‘your topic + articles’ (replacing of course ‘your topic’ for your own particular topic).
You will be presented with a myriad of potential linking partners but you won’t be linking to all of them because that would defeat the purpose: link only to those (100/500 maximum) that you sense relate most closely to your website content. Link to too many and the search engines won’t be happy. I have 423 quality links to my prime site and they consistently bring in targeted traffic that I wouldn’t otherwise get.
Easy Zero Cost Steps For Building Link Popularity
You did your homework and learned all about optimising techniques for your website. Your relevant keywords are prominently placed in all the right places on your pages. Yet your site still isn’t ranking quite the way you want.
- What do you do?
- Why bother with link building?
Link popularity and link quality are very important because every major search engine now considers them as a part of their ranking algorithms.
If you don’t have links, you won’t rank well for competitive keywords.
If your page includes all the important on-the-page criteria and scores well with Alexa ( www.alexa.com is the accepted source for measuring traffic performance of billions of web pages), it’s time to focus on your links.
Good inbound links can move your page up the ranking ladder and act as new entry points to your site.
How Does Your Site Get Those Coveted Inbound Links?
First off, let’s make sure you understand the basics.
- Link popularity is the measure of inbound links to your website.
- Link analysis evaluates which sites are linking to you and the link text itself.
Fortunately, there are many ways to improve your link quality and popularity, which will give you a boost in the rankings. Here are some guidelines to help you set up your own linking campaign:
Preparing Your Site First Before You Start Looking For Links
Before you start your link building campaign, take time to get your site in shape.
- Make sure your site looks professional, has good content and is easy to navigate.
- Check your links with a free tool like www.htmltoolbox.com.
If a potential ‘linker’ goes to your site and finds broken pages, they are not going to want to link to you.
In addition, directories have gone on record saying they may exclude sites with broken links and page errors.
Directories want only professional looking sites in their databases, so do your homework on your site before you start promoting it and your linking campaign will be more effective.
Budgeting Time For Link Building
Don’t expect to grow your link popularity overnight. Budget time every week to work on link building. If you force yourself to spend a couple of hours a week on link building, it will become part of your routine.
Pick one day a week and set aside time as your link-building time. If you don’t make it a priority, it won’t get done. Link building is an incremental activity. Over time these one or two new links start adding up until they are into the hundreds.
Establishing Realistic Linking Goals
Don’t expect to see instant results. Link building is difficult, frustrating and time intensive. Convincing another website to link to you can be exasperating. If you get one good quality link a month you’re doing better than the majority of sites out there. Patience and creativity are central to link building.
- Track your progress so you know who you’ve asked already. It could be embarrassing to ask a site for a link if they’ve already given you one;
- If a website initially declines your link request, wait a while and then ask again. Their focus may change over time. A ‘no’ today may change into a ‘yes’ six to nine months later.