This is the final installment of my Internet Marketing series. As I come to the end of this series, I realize there is much more I can say to help you succeed. I see the need to write another series in the near future. Search engine optimization is constantly evolving and time consuming. That is why clients hire us. You need to focus on your core business. If you have the time and like spending a lot of time on the web, you can do it yourself and succeed.
This month I will cover link building strategies. How to find high-quality links to your website.This is part five of an article series on the Building Blocks of Search Engine Success. If you want to read the first four articles, you can read them on my blog.To recap, the building blocks of search engine success are:
1. Build a website that is search engine friendly. That means search engines can find your website and capture the content on your site.
2. Identify what search terms people use to find your product or service, then ultimately your website.
3. Identify reputable websites that can link to your website.
4. Analyze results and revisit the first three building blocks.
What are incoming links?
An incoming link is a link from another website that is pointing to your web page. When someone clicks on the link from another page they are redirected to your web page. Building high-quality incoming links to your website requires patience, but the rewards are excellent. There is a distinction between high-quality and low-quality links. Low-quality links may actually hurt your search engine rankings.
Search engines like popular web pages that have a natural link structure. So how do you get high-quality inbound links?
1. Find links from authoritative pages. Pages that are considered important and rank high in Google. If you are using directories, include sites like Yahoo and DMOZ.
2. Find pages that match the topic of your web page. When I write an article on how Business Coaching has helped my business and I link to Jim Reilly’s business coaching site, that is on topic. I If on that page I link to my hairdressers’ site, that is off topic. Google notices the difference.
3. Do not add your page to link farms. Those are pages that have 300 links on one page with no relevance. These links will actually hurt your rankings.
4. Find links from web pages that rank high on the search engines.
5. Be consistent in the format of your incoming link. For example, always use the same URL - http://www.marknetgroup.com/ or marknetgroup.com. If someone is writing about you, you may request of them “If you point to my website, please structure the link in this manner”.
6. Get links for both your home page and sub pages on your website.
7. Do not get involved with link exchange strategies. They may actually hurt your rankings.
8. Create great content that is worthy of links.
9. Start with the top directories. They are:
http://dir.yahoo.com/
http://dmoz.org/
http://wowdirectory.com/
http://www.botw.org/
10. Write articles that link to your website.
11. Participate in Forums and add your website to your signature line.
The most important thing to remember is that you want topical links from reputable websites. If you want people to link to your website you need quality content on your website. If you are not a great writer, then hire someone to help you edit your content. I highly recommend my editor, Anne Marie Parish. She can be found at http://www.amparish.com/. There you go, Anne Marie just got a high-quality link to her website.
Share your success stories by commenting on my blog. Good luck with your rankings…give us a call if you want to achieve high search engine rankings.
Today, I am excited to announce new features coming to MarkNet Mail in July. We have received excellent feedback from customers using our email marketing tool. As our customers rely more on email marketing to get their message out our team is hard at work creating new features.We encourage you to send us any feedback you may have so we can further improve MarkNet Mail.