No, I’m not going political on you. I want to talk about link campaigns. Do you want your website to be able to rank well in the major search engines for the most popular keywords? The key is link building. Link building is one of the most ignored parts of online marketing, but along with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it’s one of the most important.
Links to your website are like recommendations from people. Each link that goes to your website is like a person telling the search engines, “Check out this site.” The more sites that do this, the more valuable the search engines think your site is. That makes your site more competitive in the search engines.
What’s Link Building?
Simply put, link building is anything and everything you do to get people to link back to your site. You want someone to put a link on their site which leads to your site. There are many strategies out there for how to link build, but in the end the goal is the same: Get as many links as possible from websites related to the same topic as your site.
The Ultimate Link Building Strategy:
I see articles all the time about the best way to build links. It doesn’t take long to see that all these ultimate strategies aren’t the same. So what strategy is the best of all these “best” strategies?
None.
The most effective strategy is whatever works for you at the time. Different strategies work better in different fields and you may be better at one strategy than another. Also, there are trends. Some strategies work well for a while and then general attitude of people starts to change and so your strategy has to change.
For example, a couple of years ago, people found it effective to blanket the online world with generic, template emails requesting a link. Lots of people started doing it and webmasters started getting irritated by it. So, now that is one of the most ineffective ways of building links.
My advice is to look around for different strategies and brainstorm for your own ideas and give them a shot. See which ones work best for you and which you enjoy (or at least don’t dread). After all, if you hate doing something, you’re not going put the time and effort you would need to in order to succeed. Go with what works and try new ideas as well. Remember, the internet is very susceptible to trends, so for the best results it good to keep trying new strategies. Social media (blogs, myspace, utube, etc.) are very popular right now, so be sure to consider ideas using the social media.
Link Building Strategies:
Below is a list of link building strategies to get you started. It certainly isn’t an exhaustive list, but it can get you moving in the right direction and help give you ideas:
• Search for sites related to the same subject as your site and email the webmaster requesting a link. I know, you’re saying, “Didn’t he just say sending emails requesting links doesn’t work?” That’s true if you’re sending mass emails using a generic message. If, on the other hand you send a personalized message which shows you are familiar with the recipients website and you address specific reasons why it would be beneficial for them to link to your site, that can be effective. Tip: Links from sites related to your site’s topic are more valuable than links from unrelated sites. So, focus on getting links from sites related to your site.
• Register your website with directories. This is one of the easier link building strategies as you don’t have to convince someone to list you (that’s what directories do) and there are plenty of sites which don’t require reciprocal linking (reciprocal linking is when you have to link back to the other site). Directories are also helpful in telling the search engines what your site is about because you put your listing in a specific category. If you don’t want to spend hours and hours submitting your site to directories, there are companies that offer directory registration services. There are even directory submission services specific to Christian directories.
• Start an affiliate program. This is where you offer an incentive to people to add your link to their site. This is especially effective for companies as they can pay a percentage of the sales generated from affiliate links.
• Offer something for free and tell other related sites about it. Maybe it’s a free online tool or a free article. If it’s something the members of other sites would like, then those other sites are likely to link to you so their members can take advantage of the free stuff.
• Create great content. This is both the easiest and most difficult way to get links, depending on how you look at it. It’s easy because you don’t actually do anything specifically trying to get links. The idea is that if your site has enough great content, people will want to link to your site without you having to even ask. On the other hand, it can be difficult to create great content and continue to offer new great content year after year. The extra benefit of this strategy is that it not only can generate links, but it also keeps visitors coming back giving you lots of return traffic. There are many ways to create good content for your website, but one of the most common ways to create great content is by blogging. If you haven’t yet, setup a blog on your website and start blogging.
• Offer reciprocal links to other sites. This is when you link to a site in exchange for that site linking back to yours. There have been a lot of bad things said about reciprocal linking in the online marketing world. Some people will tell you to avoid them all together, but I think that is short sighted and unwise. Many of the major search engines have said that they don’t give much credit for reciprocal linking, but they haven’t said that they don’t give any credit for reciprocal links and every little bit helps. Also, links are not just about the search engines, they also provide additional sources of traffic and online visibility. So, if a getting a link on another site makes sense, get the link regardless of whether they insist on a reciprocal link.
• Create content, video, or pictures that are unique and exciting and then promote them around social media outlets (utube, myspace, etc). Done right, you can create what’s called a viral marketing campaign where people find your content and tell others about it. Those people tell their friends who tell their friends, etc. If successful a viral campaign can generate thousands of links in a very short amount of time.
It’s Too Hard:
One of the biggest reasons that people don’t engage in a link campaign is that they think it will be too hard, or if they hire someone else to do it, it will be too expensive. As you can see in the ideas above, that’s not necessarily true. Yes, there are some strategies that are more difficult and can be very time consuming, but there are other strategies that are relatively simple or only have a short time commitment.
Starting an affiliate program or offering something for free on your site are examples of strategies that don’t have to have an enormous time commitment. It may take a little time get them setup, but once they’re up, they take very little maintenance. Registering with directories is a relatively simple strategy that can get you a lot of one-way links in a short period of time. It can take some time, but there are companies that offer good directory submission services that aren’t expensive. So, yes, it can be hard and time consuming to run an effect link building campaign, but it doesn’t have to be. There are a lot of ways to get links relative easily, inexpensively, and without taking a lot of time.
Time to Get in Gear:
Is your link campaign in full swing? Your competitors’ might be. In search marketing, incoming links that have been around awhile can be given more weight than new links. So, if you are thinking about putting this off, you may want to think again. Other sites have already launched their link campaigns and gotten a head start. You can make up the ground, but it’s best to start sooner rather than later. You don’t have to choose just one strategy. In fact it’s usually best to use several, especially creating great content on your site. It’s time to start getting links to your site and turn your website into an online juggernaut.
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4 Comments
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Good, insightful article Kurt. Two other ways to build links that are easy enough for anyone to and don’t take a lot of time are
– posting messages in forums (including a link to your site in your signature)
– posting comments on blogs that are related to your site.
Gotta be sure to be genuinely contributing to the conversation though and not blatently spamming for links.
Any one else have other link building ideas?
Thanks for this simple guideline. I think there is still a lot of home work in order to facilitate thousands of recently kept unheard voices of church-services in all over the world. How to make them known at first and further on to be continuously encouraged to exist – both phisically and electronically as well – is a real huge task on everyone’s shoulder who care about it!
Printing this article in my newsletter which goes out every Friday to over 12,000 people – full credit will be given to you. Great article. This will be in the marketing part of the newsletter which you will see here: http://starterkithaven.com
Many Blessings