So you’ve invested in a great website but it’s not showing up in Search Engine Results?  This article will focus on the benefits of Website Linking, the tips are easy to do and only require a little time and effort from you!

Having links from other websites to yours is a critical part of search engine optimization. As well as the obvious bonus of having people follow these links to your site (Traffic!), inbound links provide the following benefits:

• Search engine robots follow links between websites. The more inbound (Links to your site) links you have, the more often robots will visit your site!

• Search engines tend to count links to your site as “votes” for you. They assume that if lots of websites link to your site it must be high quality. Page Rank is Google’s system of counting links. The general rule of thumb is that the more inbound links you can get, the better.

If you are looking to generate more traffic and to increase your page ranking, getting quality links should be at the top of your to do list!

The best way to get inbound links is simply to create web pages which people will want to link to. Your website should offer potential visitors a reason to visit. Consider adding a blog to highlight company news, Industry best tips or Special events.  Make sure that you regularly update your site as Search Engines (and visitors!) prefer fresh content. These types of links are known as natural links — the type of link which is created to increase the usefulness of the internet.

Natural links have many advantages:

• They are free and you don’t have to reciprocate the link
• After creating the content you don’t have to work to acquire them!
• The links will be diverse, coming from differently ranked sites that have different anchor text

With a little luck and hard work you will attract enough natural links to give your site a boost.  Most websites however need to make more of an effort to acquire inbound links. Here are a couple of acceptable methods that are easy to do.

1. List your website in online directories. There are many, many directories that provide you with the opportunity to link your website.  Most of them offer this FREE of charge while some require a small fee to maintain the listing.  If you are part of an organization (i.e Chamber of Commerce, Industry Organization) make sure that you are listed on their website
2. Contact other websites that are in the same industry or genre as yours.  Ask them for a reciprocal link
3. Comment in discussion forums and newsgroups using your website address.  Make sure that are genuinely contributing to the conversation and that you do not overdo this or spam forums.  Spamming forums is a quick way to give your site a really bad name!  Plus it’s annoying!
4. Use Social media to connect with potential clients. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are just a few of the possible outlets.  This is a great way to share your Blog posts, company news or Special events with your followers.

For some great tips click here to read our Blog post “Seven Tips for Using Twitter for Business.”

Once you get listed on these sites, make sure that you visit and click on the link and follow it through to your site.  Many times I have seen companies listed on a site, click on their website link and find myself taken to a dead link or an incorrect site. What a waste!

What NOT to do!

While there are no official rules about linking, there are several methods that are known to be a very bad idea and will damage your online ranking instead of helping it. If you use the wrong methods, search engines may detect this and penalize you severely. (I.E Blacklist you – You will not show on the search lists!)

• Post on Link Farms – These sites have been set up to allow you to post your URL without being part of a directory.  These sites are not liked by search engines and linking your site on one may decrease your ranking or even cause you to not show up at all on certain search engines
• Buy links. Some websites sell links from pages with a high Page rank value. These can be very effective but they are frowned upon and search engines such as Google have been known to identify and blacklist the websites involved. The potential benefit is not worth the risk!
• Spam comment forums – Don’t do this! It’s annoying, it wrecks your websites online (and offline!) reputation and did I mention it’s annoying?

Ok, so you have done all of the above and now want to see the fruits of your labour!  Here are a couple of different ways to check out how many inbound links your website has.

• Visit www.alexa.com and type the URL of any site into the Alexa search box and click the search button and voila! This offers lots of information about the site including, related links, statistics and more
• Use search engines to find out how many inbound links you have
• With Google, enter the word link: followed by your URL to see a list of all websites which contain a link to your site.

Keep in mind that Google only returns a selection of inbound links — it doesn’t show all links to your site. Other search engines have the same feature and may provide more comprehensive results. Each one works a bit differently — visit any search engine and look for “Advanced Search Options” for more information. Also, it can take awhile for your hard work to pay off.

Your search engine results will not change overnight, it might take months for your results to change.  Consider this a project that will reap long term benefits!  Don’t think you have enough time to get your site in shape?  Take advantage of our Hassle Free Maintenance packages.

Looking for more information on how to make your website “Search Engine Friendly?”  Check out some of our other blog posts:

Understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
$100 Free Google AdWords Coupon – Get Listed on Google!
Seven Tips for using Twitter for Business
Seven Critical Questions to ask before Developing a Social Media Policy

Please consider sharing any tips that you might use for your website in the comment section below!