If you want your search engine marketing effort to pay off, one way inbound links to your website are the gold standard of the web, and it’s even better if the traffic those links generate is targeted traffic. But how do you get people to link to you?

Well, there are a lot of ways, but there are three ways that work best for me.

1. Forum Posts with strong Signature Links: This is one of the best ways to get one way inbound links, since you get to choose the Anchor Text, and no, it shouldn’t be just your business name or web URL, it should be one of your chosen keyphrases. Actually, since I have more than one website, I link to each of them with a different keyphrase for each one. The trick to this is to choose forums whose topic is related to what you do, so that the traffic resulting has a chance of converting into business for you. Be informative and helpful when posting on forums! It helps to give you an aura of “authority” with the Search Engines in the topic you’ve chosen to post about. When crafting your post’s signature, using one of your chosen keyphrases as link text also helps to push you up in the Search Listings for that keyphrase. I don’t use the same link text on every forum, I mix it up so that I grab more than one keyphrase in top ten search engine return positions (SERPs.) The only “gotcha” here is to make sure that the forums you choose don’t use the “nofollow” attribute on outgoing links. Most don’t, but there are a few that do, and posting on them is a wasted effort. To see if the forum uses nofollow, simply view/source and do a search/find for the string “nofollow”. If that term turns up, then find another forum about that subject to post on.
2. Post on your Blog: Having a blog on your site, and having it properly set up to ping the blog update services, and with tagging for sites such as Technorati, will get you one way inbound links every time you blog. This is an especially strong way to get linkbacks since people who have an interest in what you do will subscribe to your blog via RSS, and people who subscribe to update services based on certain keyphrases will know if you’ve written about something they’re interested in. Even better, if your blogpost has great information in it that has given your readers something of value, then those people are very likely to blog about you with a link back to you! Don’t forget to have links to the social bookmarking sites so that those who like your article can send even more traffic your way. And one of the strongest ways I’ve found to find topics to blog about is to search in your stats for the keyphrases people are already using to find you and use them as a springboard for new blogposts, carefully using that keyphrase in the article title and at least once or twice within the article body. If you don’t have a blog you are really and truly missing the boat here. Blogs are one of the strongest ways to snag links and push a weak site up in the Search Engine Rankings. I’ll even venture to say that for new sites with blogs as a part of the site the so-called Google Sandbox doesn’t exist. Blog sites are VERY strong in SE ranking. Don’t have a blog on your site? Talk to me.
3. Write Articles for the Article Banks: Every article I’ve ever written and submitted for the article banks has gotten me great linkbacks, respect, and, best of all, targeted traffic for many months after their release. Best article length is 300-700 words. Write about what you know that is in some way related to what you’re doing on your website. Often you can rework a blogpost so that it isn’t exactly the same, and recycle it to the article banks, a great way to get double duty out of your content. Make sure to submit to article banks that give you a linkback in your end-of-article bio, and even better if they let you choose your linktext! If you write well, choose good informative topics and present the information with a different angle or perspective than the usual, then it’s quite likely your article will be widely distributed. If you’re good, or lucky, or both, one of the high traffic sites will snag your content and reprint it, which will get you great traffic, and position you as an “authority”, which translates into good SERPs.

The forums I post on are for the most part having to do with web design and development, web hosting and Search Engine Optimization. If I’m reading and participating in a good thread I will get links from my signature, then as I follow the thread and find it’s great information, it will often turn into a blogpost on my blog, and get reworked later on for an article bank submission. Tripling the mileage you’re getting out of your work is a great way to work smart instead of hard. Doing these three things on a regular and ongoing basis will ensure that your site makes the climb into good organic placement for your chosen keyphrases.

Technorati Tags: One Way Inbound Links, SEO, SEM, SERPs

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 8:43 pmunder SEO and . Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.