- Contact webmasters and ask for one
If you are a Hawaii site, or a parenting site, or a business how-to site, or anything that could possible relate to any of these start with me. As long as I don’t think your site is spammy, and it looks like a complete site, and it’s interesting or unique in some way I may link to it. For Hawaii sites I probably will link to it. I may even ask you if you want to do an interview and get a pretty prominent link.I normally link to most people that ask, if I have a spot for their link and their site is a quality site. Find good sites in your niche and, if they are not your direct competition, ask them for a link.
- Smart reciprocal links
You have to be careful with this one. A few years ago an active reciprocal linking campaign could practically guarantee you a jump in rank. Then the search engines started to get upset they were being manipulated so easily and started to crack down. These days, willy-nilly reciprocal linking with anyone who asks could get you a ban in Yahoo and a penalty in Google. Don’t do it.The smartest way to do reciprocal links today is to not even have a links page. If you want to trade links with someone, make sure it is a site that is on the same topic as yours. If you are a Hawaii scuba dive boat operator, link to a hawaii beach site, but not a California limo company. Link to that beach site on one of your pages about Hawaii beaches, that way not only is it on topic, it’s useful to your visitors. Everybody wins.
- Write Articles
This is what’s hot right now (2006). The way many people do it is they write an article complete with an author box that has a link to their site, submit it to one of the article directories, like Ezine Articles, and wait for other people to come and find the article and put it on their site. I don’t like this method for 3 reasons:- Sometimes the people who put your article on their site leave off the link or don’t make it clickable.
- Most sites that use free articles from article banks are low-quality, making the link to your site a low-quality link.
- In my opinion, it’s just a matter of time before the search engines completely devalue these types of article links, just like they did reciprocal links.
The smart ways to get links from article writing:
- Write a quality article and submit it to one quality, high PR site like bootsnall with a link back to your site.
- Write a quality article and contact a few webmasters of smaller sites in your niche and ask for a link back in exchange for them using your content.
- Pay for links
Be very careful about this. Whatever you do, do not use a text link broker. Google has publicly said they look down on the practice of buying of text links for the sake of raising PR or rankings. Many websites, however, have found success buying links from sites within their niche for the traffic it brings. - Submit within your niche
Look for sites that are NOT full-fledged (many topics) directory sites, but which list and talk about sites like yours. For example, John’s Scuba Diving in Kona would look for sites that list scuba diving sites in Hawaii, or in the Nation, or in the Pacific, or in the world.For example, I type in scuba diving websites in Google and the first result is this page: scubasuperpower.com — I click on destinations and see that this webmaster doesn’t even have a Hawaii destination listed, but if you look at some of the other destinations you’ll see that each is a little description of diving in that place, provided by a website that the webmaster links to at the end of the article! Perfect! I now would email this webmaster and ask him if he wants a Hawaii article in exchange for a link to my site. You also could try terms like suggest a site scuba diving, suggest a URL scuba diving, cool sites scuba diving.
- Authority posts or pictures
This is a hard, time-consuming, takes a long time to see results, method, but probably the best one. You pick a subject and write the absolute best page on the web about it. For example, you could write a page about Diving Spots on the Big Island. You include over 50 such spots. You tell which are the best and why. You include pictures and personal experiences at each spot. You then try to get people to see this page (maybe put a link on your home page, in your email messages, on your forum signatures) and wait for the links to roll in. An over-the-top excellent page on any subject people talk about on the Internet will get tons and tons of natural links, over time. Years probably, but it will be a fantastic link draw to your site. Make a few of them! - Local Affiliations
If you are a Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau member you are entitled to a link from their site. A chamber of commerce may offer the same. Check with any organization your business is a member of. Some non-profit organizations will link to your site for a donation. Your alma mater may offer alumni links or webpages. - Directories
A few years ago mass directory submits were another way to get lots of links and hence higher rankings. These days, the search engines seem to have devalued most directory links. I still like to submit to some blog directories for my blogs I have attached to all my sites, but other than that I don’t bother submitting to free directories. However, a yahoo directory link ($299 a year)(!) and a dmoz link (free but takes forever) supposedly offer rankings boosts because a real person reviews your site. - Social Networking
Attach your website address to all of your emails. Participate in some forums related to your topic, and put your website address in your signature. - New technologies
If your site doesn’t already consist of a blog, start a blog on it so you can take advantage of automatic tags and rss technologies. Tag your posts so they show up at del.icio.us , furl , technorati.com. Make it easy for your RSS feeds to be subscribed to.
December 10th, 2006
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