(This was written by me, but is cross-posted from http://www.getasiteonline.com/)
One of the big factors in search engine ranking is how many sites link to your website. Each link counts as a vote for your website, pushing it up in the search engines' listings. Not only that, but every link gives others that much more of a chance to visit your website. So how do you get other sites to link to yours?
One of the best ways is to put the links in yourself. On blogs, you can leave comments and include a link to your website. So visit plenty of blogs that are related to your site's topic and leave comments. Make sure they are valid comments, insightful when possible. This will make others more likely to visit your site.
As I've mentioned in the past, post in forums that are related to your site's topic. Make sure to have a signature with your name and website address. I use something similar to this:
Tim
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
http://www.getasiteonline.com
While not all search engines count links in forums, if your messages are helpful and demonstrate your knowledge of the topic, people will be that much more likely to visit your site.
Write about a controversial topic. If you have an opinion about a controversial topic in your industry, write about it. Articulate your opinion, using good writing skills. Other sites will likely link directly to your article. And if your page design is consistent, they can easily get to the rest of your site from there.
You can also submit your website to various link directories online. Though the general purpose link directories tend not to be counted by the search engines, you can find directories specific to your industry. Maybe your business is already listed in some online listings. See if you can add your website address.
There are, of course, plenty of ways to get sites to link to yours. If you know of more, feel free to contact me or leave a comment here. And be sure to include a link to your site.
Megan posted this at 12:56 — 24th May 2006.
She has: 10,304 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
When posting on blogs, you might want to make sure they're not adding rel=nofollow to links.
I think writing any kind of quality articles and submitting to free aritlce directories might be a good option - better than posting on forums which may or may count for SE's.
By far the best way, IMO, is to contact sites you think might be itnerested in partnering with you. Ask if they'd like to exchange links and/or other resources. Make sure you're looking for sites that have a similar PR to your own. (i.e. don't waste your tome contacting a PR8 site when your site has a PR2). It think it also helps to put in a little flattery and explain why exchanging links with your site will be a benefit to them.
Megan
My web design blog
timjpriebe posted this at 13:00 — 24th May 2006.
He has: 2,666 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
Great point, Megan! I use ezinearticles.com and submit most of my blog entries there. I do edit them a bit, but I end up getting lots of traffic from various sites reposting those articles.
Tim
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
teammatt3 posted this at 21:56 — 24th May 2006.
He has: 1,907 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Like I said in another post, you can also create a template or theme for a script and put your link at the bottom. I have had great success with designing themes for PHPLD. I have only done two so far but people really like them and I get quite a few backlinks.
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andilinks posted this at 04:38 — 25th May 2006.
She has: 84 posts
Joined: May 2002
As someone who is deluged daily with spammy and automated requests for links and link exchanges I think I might be able to add a little bit here.
But do not use generic praise. If you can't say something specific about the site you have visited, don't say how "interesting" or "valuable" the site is or comment on how much work has gone into the site. I get dozens like this, I'm certain they've never looked at my site and I find it irritating.
Also, this from Matt Cutts' blog is worth thinking about:
...the Rockies may tumble, Gibralter may crumble... G & I Gershwin, 1937
Janet posted this at 05:25 — 14th June 2006.
She has: 133 posts
Joined: Jan 2006
I think the main idea in the comment above is 'excessive'. If you are selective with your link partners and only exchange links with quality, relevant sites, your site will benefit. The rest of the above article goes on to talk more about relevance in linking.
From above article:
*********************
Okay, let’s check one from May 11th. The owner sent only a url, with no text or explanation at all, but’s let’s tackle it. This is also a real estate site, this time about a Eastern European country. I see 387 pages indexed currently. Aha, checking out the bottom of the page, I see this.......................
Linking to a free ringtones site, an SEO contest, and an Omega 3 fish oil site? I think I’ve found your problem. I’d think about the quality of your links if you’d prefer to have more pages crawled.
*********************
He is commenting on the non-relevance of the links not the links themselves. Atleast that is what I get out of it.
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Megan posted this at 12:51 — 25th May 2006.
She has: 10,304 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Yes, exactly! Although, I generally don't agree with linking to random sites just for the sake of getting the link. Creating a reciprocal relationship with the site your linking with is preferable IMO. It's not very good for your users when you've got a bunch of links to crap sites that may or may not even be related to your topic. I wouldn't put a link on my site unless I really thought that site was good.
Matt - what's PHPLD??? That sounds like a really good idea. I imagine that would apply to any blog or CMS type script though. I might have to try that
Megan
My web design blog
teammatt3 posted this at 21:40 — 25th May 2006.
He has: 1,907 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
It is a link directory script that tons of people use. http://phplinkdirectory.com/ It is a huge pain to do a layout in it so there aren't a whole lot of options for people who don't want the default layout but can't afford to hire someone.
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blackhatbook posted this at 20:30 — 4th June 2006.
They have: 5 posts
Joined: Jun 2006
Hey - your living in the 20th century - take a look at the source code for this forum - you will see the no follow tag. This means posting a link here - and other places that use the no follow tag - means your link will not be recognised by the search engine bot.
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Megan posted this at 12:56 — 8th June 2006.
She has: 10,304 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
We don't have rel=nofollow on links here. A lot of blogs do. Locatepeople pointed out the real reason here - the PR of actual threads is so low that it wouldn't make a difference. I've also read that SE's might be able to tell that it's a forum sig and disregard it but I don't know if that's true or not. I've got a few hundred sig links on another forum and only a few show up on link:
That's a bit of a longshot but forum links are a good way to build visibilty for your site, especially if you have good comments.
Megan
My web design blog
teammatt3 posted this at 03:31 — 5th June 2006.
He has: 1,907 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
The sig link may not have a direct effect on link building, however, it is still possible to get real linkage from it. Picture this: someone will see that sig link, click on it, look at your site, like it, and will link to it on their site without the no-follow tag. Thus, giving you a backlink because of that sig link.
And this forum doesn't use nofollow on sig links, a lot of other forums still don't use them either.
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locatepeople posted this at 09:42 — 8th June 2006.
He has: 377 posts
Joined: May 2005
as with blog and forum links, due to their low pr (usually 0) you' need a few 100 links to make a difference. one pr4 link is porbobly better.
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