Eight Ways to Get Your Own Links


By Jordan Weiner 

The top linking strategies that you should be obtaining for your website are listed below. Link Building has become a major factor in the rankings of your website on the top search engines, and not simply for the increased quality traffic (if you find the right websites for your links) it will generate. Links are seen as a trust vote or vote of confidence by the search engines. The higher quality links are more valuable than tons of low quality links. Remember link building is a form of advertising and you must be smart about where you list your company name. Getting links from irrelevant sites, link farms and other suspect sources will hurt you.

Here are eight simple ways to start obtaining links for your website:
  1. Internal Linking – By setting up or improving your internal linking structure, you can see an improvement in the navigation and usability of our website as well help your website rankings. You should start with a text based navigation menu. This can be your primary navigation or supplemental to your primary (like a footer). Then you should also have text based site map. This will list out all your pages for the search engines. The final method is to use keywords in the anchor text of your links within your content. This will emphasize the theme or story of the other page of your website.

  2. Niche Directories – If you are in the industrial market then directories like Thomasnet.com will significantly help both your driving quality customers and help your SEO efforts.

    ThomasNet is a sourcing tool used by key industrial decision-makers at the exact moment they are searching for a new supplier for an industrial product/service: types of users are: engineers, purchasing, administration, production, maintenance, repair and operation, GM's and all other areas of specifying and buying personnel. Your local ThomasNet consultant will go through the keyword research for your exact supplying capabilities, then provide you with the Internet traffic reports and a competitive analysis so that you know what it will take to favorably position your company in the high traffic areas important to you. The Internet has allowed something the Thomas Register print couldn't do - you are now able to analyze the exact traffic and then design a program around the areas that have proven quality usage.

    In addition the links from ThomasNet are some of the highest quality links you are able to obtain from the Internet due to the facts that they tie you to a community of websites relevant to your products/services and the keyword density ratio for your exact product/service on the ThomasNet page is significant.

    Another significant added benefit of partnering with ThomasNet is that their database is also used by the American Society of Mechancial Engineers (www.ASME.org) and Engineering Fundamentals (www.Efunda.com) and other sites on the Internet. Therefore your ranking and links from ThomasNet.com will be the same on these engineering websites. If you sell to mechanical engineers or design engineers you should be favorably positioned in the ThomasNet database to get in front of these engineering audiences - for engineers are the ones specifying your product and updating the bill of materials with a specific product/company and these engineers don't like to take sales calls.

  3. Organizations or Associations – Most companies belong to at least one organization including the Better Business Bureau , Local Chamber of Commerce, Dunn & Bradsheet and any of the specific associations to your industry. Almost of all these organizations or associations have a member direct ory on their website and if you are a member, you should make sure that you are listed in that directory.

  4. Local Directories – Google , Yahoo , Local.com , and a number of Internet Yellow Pages offer a free local listing for any business. It should only take you a little time to go through the major ones and get listed.

  5. Partners – These can be manufacturers of the products you sell or service, distributors of your products or even companies that you partner with for other reasons.

  6. General Web Directories – Yeah they may not be worth a lot to the search engines, but they are simple links that are easy to obtain and most are free. The bigger more valuable ones like the Yahoo Directory and Business.com are paid, but there are thousands of other directories that offer listings for free.

  7. Competitor Analysis – During the no cost evaluation process your local consultant will share easy ways to identify the backlinks of your competitors. This is another way to find links.

  8. Content – Are you an authority or leading resource in your niche? If so, then you should be writing articles, white papers, case studies or blog posts. This will establish you as a resource for users.

Someone in your company should be undertaking this process on a continuous basis as an extension of your traditional marketing and sales initiatives.