If you JUST build it … They WON’T come!
You may be one of those frustrated companies who spent tens of thousands of dollars on your website and feel like you want to jump out the window because you are getting absolutely no results and very few visitors from that huge investment. In fact 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. Well I am here to tell you that doesn’t have to be the case.
I realize you may have blown through your entire budget simply having your website built and the thought of sinking just as much or more into the promotion of your site is something that makes you feel sick to your stomach. Stand up and head over to the medicine cabinet and grab a Zantac for your sick stomach. Everything is going to be ok.
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 these “votes of confidence.” It’s important for you to know how to effectively structure these links so you can gain the most benefit and not end up fighting over some keyword that has no relevance to the content on your site.
Use Keywords in Your Link
You need to help the search engine 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.” I am sure you’ll agree that if someone did a search on CLICK HERE, and ended up on a page within your site they’d be sorely disappointed since the liklihood of that page having any relevance to what they were searching for is about ZERO. 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.”
Create Links Where Your Buyers Hang Out Online
If you understand your buyers fully, you’ve identified where they hang out online and the types of content they prefer to consume. If they happen to participate in blogs and spend a good deal of time online reviewing news sites, you should focus heavily on commenting or writing blog entries and submitting online news releases. If you include the keyword phrases you are focusing on with links to pages within your site that contain relevant content, you’ll be in excellent shape. Don’t create links that simply link to your homepage. If you do this you’ll be forcing your visitor to dig deeper for content once they arrive, and THEY WON’T. They’ll just leave and find a site which makes it easier for them to find the content they are looking for.
You can create links by participating in blogging, forums, social media, article writing, or a number of other ways. The important thing is that you 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 also increases the size of your digital footprint and will increase the likelihood your potential customers will find you.