How and why to Build a Linking Strategy for your Web Site

Why would you want a linking strategy for your site? The most important reason is to drive traffic to your site, which in turn would increase visitors that would either purchase from you, make your web site more popular, or reach a larger audience to inform for your cause. The second reason to develop a linking strategy for your site is to help increase your rankings in search engine. With Google this is very important for achieving high web rankings, and I expect other search engines to follow suit relatively soon.

There are many ways to develop a linking strategy where links to your site will multiply without any effort from you. This is most effective way to generate links to point to your site. In this article we will discuss how to do this, debunk myths, and how to do this without unintentionally harming your site's status.

Debunking myths:

Linking software

I personally don't approve of linking software that does work for you. Why? Because software does not do a good enough job where it can tell if site it has same theme or relative content that matches your site. Many errors slip through process when this is done, that can cause damage to reputation and rankings in search engine. Also each site that you would like to link to you should have a decent PR ranking from Google to help your site's rankings. (PR ranking is a method that Google uses to put a value on web site) If you have too many web sites pointing to you with a poor PR ranking it could actually make your site drop in rankings. And in addition sites with excellent PR rankings would help your rankings a great deal.

Linking farms and automated link exchanges

Linking farms and automated link exchanges are not recommended for same reasons as linking software. Poor quality links and potentially harmful to your site. In addition these two methods carry another danger. If site that links to has been put onto a black list for spam, and your site points to that site your web site will automatically get black listed and your rankings will go down as well. That is why I prefer one way links to your site instead of reciprocal links. It may sound hard to do, but it isn't and I will show you a way to do it below.

The more sites pointing to your site better. Right?

Wrong! In past search engines would rank you higher in search engines by judging value of your site to number of links pointing to it. But because people have abused and try to cheat this system, rules have changed. Now they actually penalize you for too many sites pointing to yours if they are deemed suspicious. For instance many other sites pointing to you with same IP address (caused by you putting up mirror sites to build links), links that point to that do not have same content as you ("once I saw a web design site having a reciprocal link with a lingerie site"), and links that have low PR rankings pointing to your site (in this case more merrier does not work).

"I've seen a site with only 10 links pointing to it (links from government sites) do better with searches than a site that had over 10,000 links pointing to it."

Another thing to consider: Google has just bought rights to register domain names. So, here is a theory of mine that may show up later. Google may update their algorithm to check links to see if domain name those links are registered under contain same registration information. This way it could penalize sites that register a bunch of domain names to point to their site and try to cheat system.

"The only time you would like a lot of links pointing to your site is if they are from respectable sites, have a high PR ranking, and have relative content."

Who links to your site now?

The first skill you need to have is ability to regularly generate qualified leads. You must consistently build your list of prospects if you are to grow your business. Your business will not grow if you market to same, stagnant population over and over again. While there will be a certain percentage of people who choose to buy from you after repeated contact with your marketing material, amount who buy will always be limited by size of list to which you market.

How often do you add to your list of qualified prospects?

Here are five steps you can take to improve your prospect building skills.

Focus On Client Needs Whether you print a brochure, advertise in industry periodicals or use search engines to generate traffic to your web site first thing your marketing materials must do is get noticed. One of best ways to have your future clients notice you is to use words in your marketing materials that focus on their needs. By using such words your clients will immediately associate your ad with their problem or unmet need.

For example, if you are a patent attorney your ads will have a much better chance of being noticed and acted upon by those who need your service if you use words, “Get paid for your invention” instead of “Patent Attorney”. Getting paid is what an inventor wants. You may be proud of your status as an attorney but your clients are interested in results you provide that solve their problem.

Be sure you use words in your marketing material that focus on your clients’ needs. They will get noticed more often.

Eliminate Waste Another step you can take to improve your ability to generate leads is to eliminate unproductive marketing methods. Marketing takes time, money and effort. If your tactics are not generating results you want stop using them and try something new. Of course, in order to separate good tactics from bad you need to measure effect of individual marketing efforts.

Perhaps you run same ad in two different newspapers. If you don’t know that ad in “paper number two” is generating 95% of your prospects you will never know that it would be a smart move to reallocate money you spend in “paper number one”.

What steps can you take to measure effect of individual marketing tactics?