Link building is one of those necessary evils in that the quality of links you have to your website can play a significant part in search engine rankings, but it can take a long time to gain a good selection of quality links to a website. So where do you start?
In my experience, being organised is a good place to start, so before you even begin submitting your site, requesting links or partnering with other sites, you need to think about the type of sites you want
to link your site with.
Firstly, put together a spreadsheet where you will record sites you want to contact or submit to, if any of the links are paid and how much, and most importantly the date you submit your site or contact the site owner along with their details.
Next, prepare some link text that you can give to a partnering site to use to link to your website. Don’t rely on the partnering site to write your text link for you. You need to make sure your link text
contains appropriate keywords and is an objective description. Web directories such
as The Open Directory and Yahoo only allow approximately 25 words in a description, some allow more so prepare a variety of link text and descriptions of different lengths.
Finally think about the type of sites you want to link with. Are they sites that complement your offering? For example if you offer physiotherapy services you may want to link with complementary therapists who could refer clients to you. You may want listings in local business directories if you’re targeting a specific geographical area.
Do you have profiles on business networking sites with your link, do you post useful comments on blogs?
All of these can help to bring a wide selection of links to your website.
We’ll be covering more on link building, but preparation is key to managing and keeping on top of your link building strategy.
