Are you a frustrated company who spent thousands of dollars on your website? Does it feel like you are getting absolutely no results and very few visitors from that huge investment? You may be viewing your site as a huge expense and it doesn’t feel as if that expense is ever going to deliver any revenue. That doesn’t have to be the case.
You may have blown through your entire budget simply building your website, and the thought of sinking just as much or more into the promotion of your site is something that makes you sick to your stomach. But, it's necessary.
The key to increasing your position in the search results is building “votes of confidence” for your website. Search engines view links pointing to your site from external sites as “votes of confidence.” It’s important for you to know how to effectively structure these links so you can gain the most benefit.
Use keywords in your link
The search engine needs help to know what that “vote of confidence” is for. If your link says, “For the best prices on shoes CLICK HERE," you have just effectively included your website along with all the millions of websites competing for the search phrase, “CLICK HERE.” If someone did a search on "CLICK HERE," and ended up on a page within your site they would not find what they're looking for on your site. Conversely, if your link was “For the best prices on shoes," you would have entered the competition for the keyword phrase “best prices on shoes.” This will help you get the right traffic to your site.
Create links where your buyers hang out online
If you fully understand your buyers, you’ve identified where they hangout online and the types of content they prefer to consume. If they participate in blogs and spend a good deal of time online reviewing news sites, focus heavily on commenting or writing blog entries and submitting online news releases. Include the keyword phrases you are focusing on with links to pages within your site that contain relevant content. Don’t create links that only link back to your homepage. By doing this, you’ll force your visitor to dig deeper for content once they arrive and they won't. They’ll just leave and find a site that does make it easy for them to find the content they want.
You can create links by blogging, forums, social media, article writing or a number of other ways. The important thing is to spend a consistent amount of time each week building these inbound links if you want to continue to work your way up to the top of the search results. Link building not only helps your search position - it increases the size of your digital footprint and will increase the likelihood your potential customers will find you.
