May 2009

10 Ways to Build Links (Part 2)

There are numerous ways to build links to a website, in order to drive traffic and boost organic rankings.  We listed 5 ways in our last issue and another 5 are detailed below.

  1. Analyze who's linking to your competitors, and see if there are opportunities to get links from some of the same sites.  Go to any search engine and type "link:www.competitorsite.com" to see who's linking to whom.  Hint: Yahooworks better for this than Google, as Google will only display a fraction of the links it knows about, while Yahoo displays all of them.

  2. Look for opportunities to get links from authoritative sites.  Google gives greater weight to links from sites that end in .edu, and to a lesser extent, .mil, .gov and .org.  So if your product or service is education-, military- or government-related, get creative about ways to encourage these types of sites to link to yours.

  3. If you do any online promotions, giveaways or coupons, there are a number of sites that will link to the page on your site with details about the offer, including CouponCabin, Prizey, and GreatGiveawayGuide.

  4. Similar to the optimized press releases we mentioned last time, articlescontaining links pointing to your site can also be optimized and distributed online.  EzineArticles, Article Dashboard and SearchWarp are good places to start.

  5. An obvious place to request links is with your partners - clients, vendors, resellers, associations to which you belong, and any other company with whom you do business.  Sometimes all you have to do is ask for the link and you'll receive it.

As I said last time, link-building is time-consuming, hard work.  That's one reason search engines rely so heavily on it when calculating a site's rankings.  Note that it is critical to continue to build links to your site on an ongoing basis.  There are no shortcuts, but the results are worth the time and effort.

About Us

Prominent Placement, Inc. is an award-winning, full-service search engine marketing (SEM) firm, delivering ROI that traditional marketing channels can't touch, with a level of service that raises the bar. Since 2001, Prominent Placement has managed the entire SEM process for clients across the U.S., empowering businesses to focus on what they do best. Prominent Placement's customized solutions are backed by hard numbers, giving decision makers the confidence they need to make smarter decisions.

For more information, visit our website or call 888.SEM.MKTR (888.736.6587).