SEO Link Building

Inbound links are of huge importance when it comes to your search engine rankings.

In fact, it could easily be argued the quality and quantity of links a website has, is the most important factor that search engines consider when determining where to position that site within their listings. It makes sense really when you think about it. If a website has lots of other websites linking to it, using specific keywords and phrases, then it stands to reason, that they have something worth linking to and should be ranked well.

So you need links. That much is clear. But the only problem is that it’s become so well known that you need links to perform well on search engines, it’s become more difficult than ever to get good ones. And because everyone knows and everyone is getting links, you often need even better links and even more links in order to be able to compete on the search engines.

So how do you get quality links?

Start at Home

The first thing you need to do is ensure that your own website has quality, relevant content that has the ability to get people talking about your site and to attract links from other websites. Getting your own house in order is vital before you go out actively searching for inbound links, as nobody worth targeting will be interested in linking to your site if there’s nothing there that’s worth linking to.

It’s as simple as that.

Whatever industry you’re in, try and come up with a unique or clever approach to your content that makes you stand out from your competitors. You should never stop coming up with new ideas for content. Anything that’s interesting, funny or gets people talking about your website can secure many valuable links.
As well as interesting written articles, you could also consider adding any of the following things to your site:

• Pictures
• Videos
• Podcasts
• A Blog
• Competitions

All of these things have the ability to attract visitors and links when implemented correctly and make a website far more appealing to a wider targeted audience, which is what you always want to achieve. And perhaps the best part about having quality content on your website is that it will almost certainly attract links without you having to do a great deal of work. OK, you might have to give it a little push to start of with, but once word spreads, it can quickly take on a life of it’s own.

Spread the Word

So once you’ve got quality content on your own website, you need to tell as many people as you can about it, to ensure that it gets viewed by a large audience. The more people that see your excellent content, the better chance you’ll have of impressing the right people and attracting links to your website.

A great way to spread the word about the content on your website is to use Social Media. Even if you’re not sure what that term means, you’ll have heard of many of the social media sites. Places like:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• MySpace
• Twitter

Just by signing up to these social networks and telling all your friends and contacts about your site, you can set the wheels in motion. If you tell a handful of people and they all do the same, it suddenly creates a snowball effect and generates lots of buzz surrounding your website.

Of course you must be careful not to seem like you’re spamming, as this will damage both your reputation and your search engine ranking. Therefore it’s imperative that you think about everything you do carefully and go about telling people about your site in the right manner.

Content sharing networks are also a great way to drum up large volumes of interest in your website. Places like:

• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Del.icio.us
• Reddit

These websites allow you to publicise your content and can produce fantastic results if you know how to use them properly.

Wherever possible, you should also try and develop your personal or social network. Make friends with people who run other websites and develop useful contacts that can help you tell the world about your content. The bigger the network you have, the greater the chances are that you’ll attract links.

Making it Happen

There are lots of ways you can create links on other websites yourself, that can help you improve your search engine rankings.

Article submission is a popular way of building links. How it works is that you write a small article (normally around 400-500 words) and add it to an article submission website, within a relevant category to both the subject of the article and your own site. In return for giving them the article, you’re allowed to insert links back to your own website within the content. So it’s kind of like an exchange; you do something for them and they do something for you.

Directory submissions are also a simple way of generating some links back to your website. This is a straightforward process where you add details about your website to an online directory in order to be listed. However, you need to be careful about which directories you submit to, as some are better than others. In some cases, you might also have to pay to submit your listing, so knowing what your doing is incredibly important. See our directory submissions page for more detailed information.

There’s also nothing wrong with contacting other websites directly to ask if they might be interested in linking to your site. Although it never hurts to ask, you should try and come up with a clever angle or some kind of incentive to persuade the Webmasters you’re contacting that it would be worthwhile to link to you. If they don’t have any reason to link to you, they probably won’t, so make sure you state your case.

Offline marketing initiatives can also bring links. Whether that’s advertising in magazines, on the radio, on the TV or somewhere else; if it gets people talking about your website, that can eventually convert into links.

So as you can see, if you’re proactive in your approach, it can open the doors to many link-building opportunities.

Big Bang SEO Link Building

At Big Bang SEO, we’ve got a wealth of experience in building effective link building campaigns that really create results.

Every website and every market is different, so we tailor our approach specifically for each of our clients, to ensure we’re always offering excellent value. We’ll work closely with you to devise a strategy for identifying links in your market and target ways to secure them.

We’ll help you ensure everything on your own website is geared towards attracting links and come up with a range of exciting and creative ideas for new content that can be added. We’ll also help you implement those new pages to ensure you gain maximum exposure on the search engines.

We can then use all of our expertise and the techniques detailed on this page to market the content and ensure a huge audience views your website and realises the benefits of linking to it.

At Big Bang SEO we know that link building is very much an ongoing process and we’re dedicated to constantly refining our strategy inline with the latest developments and new targets that the site might have.

If you’d like to find out more about the link building services that we offer, please feel free to get in touch for further information here.