A Simple Guide to Link Building
Last week, our blog posting gave some basic, overall SEO knowledge. This week I’d like to share with you some link building tips. Link building, as we mentioned, is extremely important to the search engines at this time. Having a link building strategy is crucial, as incoming links to your site carry a lot of weight in the search engine algorithms and are an 
important factor in determining rankings for your keywords.
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The below list is a couple ways to get a link popularity campaign started:
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Start out by submitting your site to paid directories that the search engines have determined relevant and valuable – Yahoo Directory, Business.com, Best of the Web. Pricing ranges from $20 – $300 per year per directory, but can definitely be worth it. If you’re on a tight budget, choose the paid directories that are most relevant to your business and are favored the most by search engines like Google. Specifically, we’ve seen the Yahoo Directory boost rankings significantly for our clients in Google.
- Submit your site to relevant free directories as well. Make sure you are submitting your site to the most relevant categories for your business. Do Not use link farms, Do Not use a mass submission service. As tedious as the task may be, manual submissions are the best way to go.
- Reach out to your business partners, clients, vendors, and any related site that would be relevant to your business. Send them an email, give them a call, become a website partner with them. Though reciprocal links do not carry a much weight, if they want a link back and they are relevant to your offerings, go for it.
- Determine organizations and associations that are relevant to your business and reach out to them for a link as well. After all, links from .edu and .org sites tend to carry more weight than .com sites.
- Create Social Networking profiles and business pages within these networks. Links from LinkedIn, Face Book, You Tube, etc, tend to carry significant weight. Create a blog with an RSS feed – as the best links are unsolicited.
- Take a look at the top pages ranking for your keywords, and determine who is linking to them. This can be done by typing in Links:www.websiteURL.com in Google. If incoming links to their site would make sense to your site, reach out to them – it can’t hurt to ask! And if they’ve given your competitor a link, they may be willing to give you one, too.
- Ensure your anchor text – the actual text of the hyperlink – utilizes a keyword. Instead of Your Website, make sure the link includes a keyword that you want to get ranked for.
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The real secret to link building is quite simple – create good, quality content that is worth discussing and would make someone want to link to you. Keep it on topic and relevant to your business (how many times can I stress the word relevant?) – because after all, they do say content is king!
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Need a little office pick-me-up? Check out this YouTube video on Link Building. (I’m sure he’ll appreciate the link)
October 9th, 2009
Great article/Note, BUT, as a customer of Bayshore Solutions, You ought to realize you have UN-tapped potential to use your own advice.
The employees @ Bayshore Solutions could propel the trajectory of their advice by connecting with their customers through Facebook and Twitter. You all have a fan page on facebook that still uses OLD media habits and ONE WAY communication like press releases.
Your advice could be infinitely better if you tried to practice what you preach and connect to your customers and they will RT and promote YOU and Bayshore Solutions back. This way EVERYONE could win, prosper and make more $$$.
You have your own untapped RT and status update Goldmine that you are ignoring. I just shared your recently published Note and thought about this….I don’t mean to sound disrespectful at all.
We should look at combining and utilizing the power of your network, friends and followers with MY network, friends and followers! Multiply this by ALL of your customers….wow!
October 19th, 2009
Hi Hank:
Kimberly, from Bayshore Solutions Corporate Marketing here – Thanks for your comment.
Yes you are right – we, like many companies, are in the process of making advances with our own social marketing initiatives. In our focus on making our clients come first, the discipline and attention needed for the integrated 2.0 nature of our profiles has not been as advanced as those of the clients that our teams are serving. We are currently taking strides to address this and take better advantage of exactly this opportunity for interactive communication that you mention.
I am really excited to have a new team in place for advancing the best practices we use with clients into our own efforts (i.e.: Drinking our own Kool-aid from an equal-sized mug). Stay tuned over the next month to see the changes we are implementing in our Facebook and other social media footprints.
November 20th, 2011
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