Optimizing your website for better search engine results ranking is like using shampoo. It’s a whole lot of “lather, rinse, repeat”.
You’ve designed your site with SEO in mind. You’ve optimized images, video and dynamic elements to make them visible – and indexable – to search engine crawlers. You’ve written compelling copy focused on just the right keywords.
But when you Google the search terms prospective customers would use to find your services, you’re not in the top results. Did your efforts just get washed down the drain?
Lather Up with Inbound Links
Inbound links (meaning other sites that include links to your site) are the most important factor that Google considers when ranking search results. Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines also consider inbound links to varying degrees.
If each inbound link represents a “vote”for your site, and more links helps you move up in the rankings, how do you get more links?
One way to get inbound links is to generate content outside your site’s domain, such as:
- Posting press releases with media services,such as PRWeb, that link back to your site
- Write guest blog posts or e-magazine articles and include a link to your site
- Make relevant comments on blogs or participate in forum discussions and include a link to your site
- Draft whitepapers or case studies for publishing on industry sites or community sites
- Create videos and post on sharing sites, such as YouTube, with a link back to your site
In addition to the links you create by posting the types of content listed above, others that find value in your content will also link to your content and your site.
Another way to generate inbound links is to use your existing relationships, or create new ones:
- Add links to your vendors and business partners, and ask them to link back to you on their sites
- Seek complimentary services or products and then build reciprocal links
- Use your relationships with local organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, to request directory links
- Purchase links in online directories, such as Yahoo! Directory or others that are specific to your business or industry
Rinse for Results
Now that you’ve figured out how to get more inbound links, it’s time to measure the results. To see a list of the sites that link to you, check out a great free tool called Link Diagnosis.
Using the Yahoo! Site Explorer requires you to create a free Yahoo! Account. This tool is reputedly the most reliable inbound link checker and lists the keywords found most frequently on your site, the number of pages indexed on your site, and URLs of other sites that link to you.
Link Diagnosis uses Yahoo! Site Explorer to find inbound links, but this tool goes a bit farther to show you the anchor text, the page rank and any applicable nofollow information for each link. To use the tool, just go to linkdiagnosis.com and enter you site’s URL (hint: use Firefox, click “Allow” when asked to install the Link Diagnosis add-on). You can export your report, then enter the URL for your competition and compare their results to yours.
Repeat
Armed with the results of your inbound link exploration, evaluate which types of content and links are most popular. Go back to the first step to lather up your site with inbound links, and keep creating content and encouraging others to link to you. Then rinse for results again, and repeat.
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