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Link building is still the one thing that causes small businesses the most confusion and frustration. I’ve written about it before on Savvy Marketers and it’s one of those activities that really has to be done, whether you like it or not! Quality links pointing to a site is still one of the most important ranking factors, so I thought I’d share a few quick and easy ways to gain links if you’re starting out.
1. Business Directories
There are plenty of directories out there to submit your site to (some are better than others), but this is a great place to start with link building. It’s worth researching directories that serve your industry sector and also local directories if you serve a particular geographic area. Some good ones to look at are:
TouchLocal
FreeIndex
City Local
Open Directory (DMOZ)
Applegate
Kellysearch
Bizwiki
2. Competitor Backlinks
You can find out where your competitors have gained their links from which can help a huge amount with research, saving time. To find your competitors links, the Yahoo Site Explorer is a good place to start. Type in your competitor web address and click on ‘inlinks’. You’ll be presented with a list of websites, which can also be downloaded into a spreadsheet if you use the ‘export results to TSV’ link.
Not only will this give you an idea of where your competitors may be gaining links from, but also an insight into what online marketing activities they’re doing. At the same time, don’t forget to review which sites link back to your own!
3. Blogs / Articles
Writing blog posts and articles which show off your expertise is another way of gaining links, which will also be more in context of what you do. If you’ve previously written articles, then work out how they could be recycled to use on article submission sites, guest articles on sites within your industry sector which may be looking for content, or even as a guest blogger on a blog that may serve your target market. There are usually quite a lot of opportunities when you start looking! Some of the better article submission sites include:
Ezine Articles
Hubpages
Squidoo
Articles Base
4. Social Networks
With the ever growing popularity of social networks, getting your content shared can also contribute towards the ‘link popularity’ of your website. The search engines are now taking activity on social networks into consideration in the way they rank sites (even if it’s not a large part of their algorithm currently), however, if your content is shared by more influential people, this can really help. Just make sure that what you share is good quality information! For more on this, please read our post ‘Social Media Does Affect Search Engine Rankings‘
5. PR
If you’re embarking on a PR campaign for your products or services, make the most of the press coverage you get. Most ‘offline’ press articles are also put online and this is where a live link to your site would really help. Don’t forget to ask if the publication forgets to do this for you! If you’re sending out press releases, then make use of some of the press release sites out there too which include:
PR Web
PR Fire
PressBox
For more link building tips on Savvy Marketers, there’s a few posts worth reading in our Link Building category.
What link building tips can you share? If you’ve done anything that’s really helped spread the word and gain links for your business, then please add your comment here!
About Samantha McArthur
Sam McArthur is an internet marketing consultant with 12 years in the industry. She helps professional service businesses with their internet marketing strategy, helping them to see significant results from their online marketing activities, particularly within the search engines. She also consults on the latest internet tools, technology and best practice techniques.
Some good ideas.
Would you still include HubPages and Ezine on the list after the effect the Panda update had on these sites????
Hi Andy thanks for commenting! It all changed soon after I wrote this post didn’t it! I’ve had this discussion with a few clients since and my thoughts are that if you’re going to use the article submission sites to submit useful & interesting articles, then do so exclusively, i.e there’s no point in submitting the same article to more than one directory. I would imagine that with the Panda updates, some of these sites, such as Ezine Articles & Hubpages may go down the route of exclusivity anyway. I’ve noticed that Ezine articles rankings have really plummeted as I used to see them regularly in the search results, so if you used to submit to these sites a lot, the results you’ll get from them won’t be anywhere near previous traffic levels = might as well use the time on other activities!
In reference to point 1.) Your readers may want to check out a fantastic resource that I sometimes use – it’s created by White Spark (I think if you search for white spark seo you will find it quite easily – but what this ingenious tool does is gather up lots of resources based on your niche and location, it emails you the results and generally there are a vast amount of free resources in which to gain citations – which is very handy for Google Maps etc. The trouble with those business listings that are listed above is that they store your company info and undoubtedly attempt upsells from the free package on a very regular basis. I do agree however that they are somewhat important, they demonstrate the physicality of the business behind the website to the eyes of search engines.
Classifieds are also a quick and easy way of building up quick backlinks. All you have to do is create a short ad for your company and place it on good Classifieds from around the world.