A few days ago, in my post Why Google Matters, I talked about the basic importance of Google and why you need it for the success of your site. Well, duh, you’re thinking. I know. I know. It’s pretty simple, but we need to start at the beginning for those of you who may not be aware of these details.
Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) refers to the process of enriching and optimizing your site so that it grows in popularity and rank in search engine results pages. Living somewhere between the marketers and the developers, SEO is considered to be a bit of a “black art” – meaning even if you follow all the rules and suggestions to the comma and quotation mark, there is still no guarantee that you’ll improve your PageRank. In addition, if you abuse the rules, you might even get blacklisted from our friends at Google who don’t take too kindly when publishers try to beat the system.
It’s possible for your site to become popular organically. You could just continue to write great content and hope that it gets picked up in Google and is blessed with a high position – but that’s just like waiting for success to happen to you. Personally, I’m too impatient for that.
Remember that the search engines are always looking for websites that contain relevant content, but it’s possible to help them along (that’s what the “submit url” link is there for!). If you want to improve your site’s rank in engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, it’s important that you employ classic SEO tactics – like link building.
Link Building: The Basic Concept
“Link building” refers to the number of hyperlinks that point to your website from various sources.
Basically, the more sites that link to you, the better. It tells the search engine that your site is important, and depending on the nature of the links themselves, it raises the relevance and aboutness factor of the content – subsequently improving a search engine like Google’s opinion of your content for those particular search terms.
Take this example:
You create a site about strollers. You have a review of the Maclaren Quest, as well as lots of relevant pictures and user comments on your site about that particular stroller. A search engine crawling your site thinks, “Ah ha! This site is not only about strollers, but it’s about a particular kind of stroller – the Maclaren Quest.”
Sally the Stroller Shopper just bought that stroller and posts your review on her public Facebook page to show her mother in Seattle what kind of stroller little Katie will be rolling around town in. She uses the phrase “I’m not the only one that loves my new Maclaren Quest stroller!” as the caption.
When the search engine scans through Sally’s Facebook page, it thinks “Oh, here is the term Maclaren Quest.” And unless there is a no-follow link (we’ll get to that another day), the search engine will follow to the next site and think “Ah ha! Here’s that site again! This content must really be about the Maclaren Quest – and it must be important and relevant since people are linking to it.”
And so on. And so on. And so on.
But how can I increase the number of links pointing to my site?
You can do that a couple of ways. You can pay for an SEO service to execute a link-building campaign for you. Or you can build the links somewhat naturally.
Since I’ve never paid a service, I’ll talk more about the natural link-building.
Building Links Naturally (At Least Semi-Naturally) – A Few Pointers
First and foremost, write compelling content that people WANT to link to. Guru blogger Yaro Starak talks in depth about pillar content. It’s vital. If you have crap content, then no one will link to you.
Good content also requires people to read and have the facility to link back to your site. So make friends online –blogging about a person or site, or linking to their site means that they might scratch your back in return.
Add your link to every possible public profiling and social media thing out there. Just the other day, I read this great post in Daily Blog Tips that suggested that you should update your Google Profile and grab the easy backlink.
Make sure you ping blog search engines like Technorati.
One classic way to build links is to put your link everywhere through blog commenting and participating in online discussion forums.
Be sure to submit your site to all relevant directories. There are both free and paid ones available, depending on your budget.
Make sharing easy. Post Digg, del.icio.us, etc links on your site.
Good luck!
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very good article with lots of infromation. I will try your rules and hope I got some links more