Link Building
Introduction
Building back links is probably the most important part of optimising your site. There are many different ways to accomplish this. This page discusses various ways of accomplishing this.
The best links are those from sites with a similar type of content to your own site. It wouldn't make much sense to add a link to a Holiday website from an Electronics Directory, a Car Enthusiasts blog or a Pub's website.
Begin your search for a directory which targets a specific niche or one which has categories specific to the type of content on your own site. It wouldn't make much sense to submit a link for a Dog Breeding website to an Automotive Mechanics directory website. Directories which cater to specific niches attract internet surfers who are seeking that type of information.
Link building in Directory Websites
Website and article directories provide a good way to promote your website. There are many websites that will help you submit your site to lots of different directories. Most of these will charge for this service. The best approach is to do this in batches rather than all at once and to vary the anchor text and description from one submission to the next. I will make some site recommendations just as soon as I have finished researching this topic.h
The following is a list of sites that maintain a list of directories (if that's not too convoluted) . . .
- Directory Critic is a link building resource it lists search engine friendly web and article directories
- 5 Star directory - list of lists
Link building in Blogs
The primary reason for building and maintaining a blog is to give you a platform from which to build links backs to your site and to its content. When you build these links, it is important to use your chosen keywords for the anchor text so that the search engines know the subject of your site
Creating and keeping your blog up to date is also a great way to build up a following of people interested in your site, product or area of expertise. If you're lucky and make your blog interesting, you might even find some readers add comments or posts that also reference your site. Blogs are very search engine friendly and are beginning to significantly influence search engine rankings.
It is also a good idea to get involved with other peoples blogs on the same topic as this will give you another opportunity to link back to material on your site.
Setting up a blog is a completely free exercise, it only costs your time end effort. There are numerous publicly available blog sites. Here is a short list (in no particular order) of the main ones:
Reciprocal links
If you are brave enough, then exchanging links with your direct competitors on the web is a good strategy. These links will be seen by search engines to be highly relevant and any business you might loose will be more than made up for by the extra visitors it will bring in.
