How To Get Links For Your Website

Links are the foundation of the Internet. They’re important for several reasons:

They’re important for several reasons:

1) People will click on them and discover your site.
2) Search engines follow them to discover your website, and to find out what it’s about.
3) Search engines consider the number as well as the quality of links to your web-pages to be an good indicator of your pages’ importance.
4) Search engines also consider the link text (the words you click on) to be important in determining what your website’s about, and thus in determining for which search results your site will appear.

The simple truth is, without links to your site, the search engines will give little importance to your site, and people won’t be able to find it… and will probably never find it.

THE IMPORTANCE OF RELEVANT LINKS

The Search Engines give the most weight (in terms of where they place your page in their results) to links from web-pages that are closely related to your own. These are called “relevant links.” If you’re a Surrealist painter, for example, it would be massively beneficial to get a link from a web-page about Surrealism, painting, art or any combination of the above. In contrast, a link to your painting site from a car dealer or a veterinarian would be pretty irrelevant and pretty useless.

The Search Engines consider relevant links to be very important, and carry more weight than links from websites unrelated to your own. And, if you can get a link from a relevant page that also contains your keywords in the link text, that’s even better!

ON LINK TEXT

Your link text (the words that you click on to activate a link), is very important, too. Having the right link text will help you get found when someone searches for those words or phrases.

You don’t always have control over the words someone uses to link to your site. But if you’re in a position to specify the link text (as in a reciprocal link exchange, or in a directory submission), suggest one that contains one of your keyword phrases.

Here’s a quick Pop-Quiz! … Which of the following two examples of Link Text would you use to link to the fictional Dweezil Foley’s website ?…

Dweezil Foley ,OR
Dweezil Foley – Americana Singer-Songwriter

The first link text doesn’t give people (or Search Engines) any idea of what the site is about. The second includes some keywords.

Almost all links are good. But ones with your keywords in them pack way, WAY more punch…

TYPES OF LINKS

One-way links are just from website A to website B. Website B doesn’t link to website A. Most links on the Internet probably fall into this category and they are the most desirable type of links. I should point out that search engines also consider one-way links more important than reciprocal links…

Reciprocal links happen when you exchange links with another website – preferably one with a subject related to yours – that’s a reciprocal link. Find other sites in your field – even competitors – and offer an exchange of links.

For best success, link to the site in question before you email them to ask for a reciprocal link. In your email, tell them where to find their link. If you don’t hear back from them after a reasonable amount of time (perhaps a month), you can remove the link from your page.

Reciprocal links are less desirable than one-way links (those where you don’t link back); they’re given somewhat less weight by the search engines.

However, though they carry less weight, it’s still worthwhile to exchange links with sites related to your own, which may be of interest to your visitors.

Just be judicious about who you link to; don’t accept every (or even most) “let’s exchange links” offer that lands in your inbox. (Links to spammy or low-quality sites won’t help you or your visitors.)

Natural links; Over time, people will discover and link to your site because they like it; these “natural links” are very valuable as well.

To encourage natural (sometimes called “organic”) links to your site, present content that is very useful to your visitors, and add new content on a regular basis (this is where the high quality content you prepared after last week’s article comes in)

It can also be helpful to present a “link to us” page with ready-to-use link code & perhaps some graphics, to make it easy for people to link to your site. Here’s an example.

Paid links; It is possible to pay for a link in a web directory or on another site. Though it’s usually not necessary to buy links (and Google frowns upon some types of link buying and selling), if you’re going to do it, make sure to buy your link from a quality site somehow related to your own.

Internal links are to pages on your own website. These type of links are completely within your control and can have a dramatic effect.

Use brief, descriptive text links. For example, if you sell Voda Books, a link on your pages reading “homepage,” is clear enough, but it’s better to use “Voda Books home,” or even just “Voda Books.” This helps the search engines understand that the page being linked to is about “Voda Books” – not about “homepage.”

See how effective link text is?

Image links; Search engines can’t read images. So, if you’re linking with an image (as with a navigation button), use “alt” text to describe the web-page the image leads to. An image tag might read something like this:

<a href=”http://vodabooks.com”>>img src=”/images/articles/books.gif” alt=”Voda Books”></a>

Another example of image links this site’s navigation menu above. (They’re images meant to look like text.)

External Links are those to other websites. Link out to quality websites similar to your own. What will be helpful to your visitors? Don’t link to spammy websites, link farms, or what Google calls “bad neighborhoods,” because links to these type of sites can hurt you. Be very selective in your links.

SO, HOW DO I GET LINKS?

Social Networking; This is an absolutely beautiful way to get links. Check out the below articles for full details (way more info than I could put here):

Social Bookmarking and why you need it

Why your business needs a Facebook fan page

Tweeting about Twitter and why you need it

Submit your site to web directories: Directory links are great. They’ll have your keywords in the link text & description, on a page with a topic relevant to yours. People browsing through the directory can find your site as well.

Submit your site to the best general directories & specialized topic directories.

Need some help with your directory submissions? We offer a directory submission service – check it out at vodahits.com

Sites in your field; When you find a website similar to yours (even that of a competitor!), or on a related topic, consider asking them for a link. Don’t forget informational sites, professional organizations, & forums.

Go local; Your place of employment, friends, clients, school, local organizations, or businesses you deal with may link to you.

If you’re an artist, ask local galleries, other artists & art supply shops. Musicians, ask local venues, music stores, gear manufacturers, band-mates. Writers can get links from their publishers & fellow writers and so on…

You know more likely places to get links than you think you do! A little brainstorming will turn them up.

Forums & Emails; If you participate in online forums or discussion boards, put a link to your website in your signature (if it’s permitted). Every post you make will give you a link (albeit one that may not carry a lot of weight).

It will happen naturally; If your site offers something of value, folks will begin to link to it because they want to. And, some of these links will be from relevant sites.

You can encourage your visitors to link to you by including a “link to us” page that provides link code & some graphics.

YOU NEED LINKS TO YOUR SITE…

…you’ll be lost without them. There are many other things you can do to promote your site as well but in terms of your website being found by the Search Engines there’s nothing as important as getting links to your website!