Build Links To Drive Traffic

You've built your website and have tested some of the basic concepts found in Online Marketing - Part 1. Let's focus on a specific strategy to get more traffic to your website: link building.

Why are inbound links so important?

Most search engines, such as Google, MSN and Lycos, present search results based on the number of quality, inbound links to your site. Links can also increase quantity and quality of traffic to your website.

Imagine this scenario:

You (the search engine) are vacationing in a distant city (the Internet), and want to find the best place to eat in town (search engine query). Stopping at a convenience store for a map, you ask a convenience store clerk where she likes to eat.

"Sunrise Diner is my favorite place," she says (a link).

Not satisfied, you walk a few doors down to the local chamber of commerce. You ask for a recommendation for lunch. The receptionist hands you a stack of fliers for all the businesses in town (bunch of unrelated links). She winks at you and says "I eat lunch at Sunrise Diner three times a week" (a link).

Thinking you have found the perfect place, you hop in a taxi.

"Sunrise Diner, please".

The driver turns towards you and smiles.

"My wife is the best cook in town and works at Sunrise Diner" (a link).

It's easy to see how website links are like face-to-face networking to the search engines.

How to look for link partners.

Look for link partners by searching your keywords and market niche. Since webmasters are inundated with junk link requests, write a compelling offer with a value proposition that makes sense. Look at the websites of your local chamber of commerce, business association, etc. for a "links" page. If none is found, consider buying a link on their website. Again, make a compelling offer.

If you are a member, some trade organizations will give you a free link in exchange for you placing their logo on your website. Links within your relevant industry are very powerful to a search engine. Remember: when searching for link partners, think complementary, not competitive.

Get your first links today.

Get your first link by submitting your data to www.dmoz.org - The Open Directory Project. Follow their onscreen instructions for submitting a link. You'll need to navigate to the most appropriate category for your website. A link from DMOZ is extremely important. DMOZ feeds AOL Search, Google, Hot Bot, Lycos, Netscape and more. There is no charge for this link. The downside: your link could take months to show.

If you have a small marketing budget, a link on Business.com ($199/year) and Yahoo.com ($299/year) are worth paying for.

Other ways to get links.

There are many other ways to get links.

• Create a short "signature file" that includes your name, URL, and sales message (*). Then make comments of web logs (a/k/a "Blogs") and forums within your industry, adding your "signature file" to each posting. Using signature files is valuable not only for the potential inbound link, but for the visibility you'll get within the blog or forum.
• Write and distribute an article, including your website URL and short bio in the footer. Your value proposition to the webmaster is the free content from your piece. They simply have to keep the entire article (and your link!) intact.
• Similarly, you can distribute an online tool, offer a free service, or create an award logo (such as "YourWebsite.com's Site of the Week"). Don't forget to ask visitors to link to you.

Build a links page.

Build a "links" page for reciprocal links, but create an out of the way link. You don't want to lose your potential customers to another website. As easy way to do this is to create a link to your "links" page from your sales or lead confirmation pages. That way, you'll have captured user data.

The most important aspect of creating a links page is to make sure all of the listed links are high quality - linking to a real website with content. Categorize the links to make sense not only to your user, but to search engines. Once you create your "links" page, you can then put up links to potential partners, and begin your message with "I've added your link to my resources page, which can be found here: http://www.anysite.com/links.html. Will you consider linking back to me?" ... and so on.

Find out who's linking to you now.

Want to know who is linking to you now? Just open up Google and type in this query (replacing yoursite.com with your website): link: www.yoursite.com

You'll be given a list of all the links that Google has found linking to you. Finding who is linking to you is even easier to do if you have installed any of the following toolbars:

Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) or the Alexa Toolbar (download.alexa.com).

Or by using the tools located on the following websites:

• LinkPopularity (http://www.linkpopularity.com)
• LinkPopularityCheck (http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com)
• CheckYourLinkPopularity (http://www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com)

For those who want a more powerful link-building tool, consider using Axandra's Arelis utility, about $99 (http://www.axandra-link-popularity-tool.com). This automatically searches for link partners, builds a link directory and composes emails for you.

Final thoughts.

Create lots of high quality content for your website. The more content you create, the larger a funnel you make for search engines to find you. Webmasters will link to your content and resources. Search engines prefer to find your page from links on other websites, making link building a necessity. But it's the relevance of the link, not the number of links that determine your rankings. Link building is like making friendships: best done one at a time.

(*) Joe Robson in his e-book, Make Your Words Sell, reminds us that, "Just as a P.S. at the end of a sales letter magically attracts the reader's eye, your sig file freely advertises your goods and services to your audience! And no one thinks of it as spam. But many marketers put too little thought into their sig file. What a sad, sad waste."

About the Author

Brian J. Farrell – Marketing Consultant, helps small business owners find new customers and make more sales in 30 days or less — guaranteed! Call or contact Brian today for a confidential analysis of your business marketing plan and he'll uncover assets you can capitalize on right now, without spending more money on advertising.