We know you’re always working on your SEO. Optimizing the title tags and creating new content for search engines to crawl. Of course you’re doing all that. But, are you also working on increasing the number of links to your website? It’s a primary area for improving search engine rankings and should be an important aspect of your overall strategy. Let’s take a look at some ways you can execute:
- Who’s linking to your competitors? – This is a a great place to start. How should you approach this? Go to Yahoo and type link:http://www.competitor.com. Click “Inlinks” for the full list. If you find any sites that appear to offer a strong linking opportunity (by reviewing their link quantity or PageRank), send them an email request. Keep a list of who you’ve contacted and follow-up. Want to see which sites are linking to multiple competitors? Again with Yahoo, type linkdomain:competitor1.com linkdomain:competitor2.com.
- Blog lately? – If you don’t have a blog, then you should start one. Provided it is updated regularly, it will give your site frequently updated content that’s also a great chance to acquire natural links. A good interface to use is WordPress as it offers the excellent All-In-One SEO Pack and aLinks plugins.
- Talk to your partners – Do you work with other websites? Do you have sister organizations that share a parent company? If these other sites aren’t linking to you, then ask them to (and offer to link back.) With partner links, sites generally have a better opportunity to request keywords in the link’s anchor text.
Along with strong content and optimized site code, high external link numbers are a key factor for a strong SEO presence. Gaining new links can be a daunting process, but the more sites you contact, the more links you’ll end up with.
