An important element in getting your site ranked well with the search engines is to fill it with quality content. How do the search engines judge what is quality content?
They have a number of proprietary algorithms, and they tend to be secretive about many aspects of how they evaluate sites and determine rankings. However, one thing we know is that having a lot of good links coming in to your site is one factor that can help you to rank well.
You might think of links as “votes” for your site. That’s a simplistic way to look at it, but it is not a bad analogy. When someone likes your site, they link to it. When a lot of sites link to your site, that means a lot of people like it.
The search engines like links to occur because people want to link to your site. They are opposed to things such as “link farms” (massive link exchanges) or paid links that try to game the system. The best links are those that occur naturally. However, it is possible to do things that ethically encourage incoming links.
Some links are more valuable than others. A link from an authority site to yours is worth more than a nofollow link you got by placing a blog comment. Just about any link will have at least some value, though, and you should always be on the lookout for ways to get more links.
Also remember that links have value beyond the search engines. Links may be followed by humans looking for more information about your topic. Posting an article, blog comment or other useful information, along with a link to your site, can lead them directly to you.
When talking about leads, we advise to consider following six ways to generate incoming links to your site:
Publish quality content. Bloggers and other website owners like to link to relevant content. If you write and publish tons of quality content, you’ll receive tons of incoming links.
Write articles for other sites. Writing articles and publishing them on other sites, especially respected sites in your niche, is a great method for getting inbound links.
Guest post on other people’s blogs. Bloggers are always looking for fresh content, and many are open to using guest posts. Approach bloggers in your niche and offer to write guest posts. They get the content, you get links to your site. Subscribe to http://BloggerLinkUp.com to find guest posting opportunities.
Write press releases and submit them to online press release websites. Be sure to include your website link at the end of the press release so media representatives can contact you, but also so you have an incoming link and interested visitors can find your website.
Get reciprocal links. Some reciprocal links are good as long as they’re coming from relevant websites. The trick is to balance reciprocal links with one-way links. Mix up your linking tactics so it looks natural to Google.
Participate in social networking. Posting tweets, and Facebook posts create incoming links to your website. In addition, when you comment on forums and other blog posts you also create incoming links via your signature.
As you’re creating and implementing your search engine optimization strategies, take the time to consider and include these linking tactics. While you may not be able to complete them all at the same time, instead focus on one tactic at a time adding to your SEO strategy as you grow.
