If you have a website then you probably are thinking about the best way to market that website. If you have done some research then you will be aware that in order to increase traffic you will need to build your positions in the search engines. Building links is one of the best tactics for improving your search engine rankings. The aim of this article is to give you some advice on building link popularity.



Why Are Links Good?

When search engines rank sites they take into account how popular a site is to determine the relevance of it. Every link that you have to your site is seen as a vote by the website that links to it. So the more links you have the more popular your site is seen as by the search engines. In general the most popular sites rank higher than those that are less popular.

Getting Sites to Link to You

In order to build your popularity you need to get other sites to link to you. Below is a list of ways to get other websites to link to you and so increase your popularity.

1. Write Articles - A great way to build links to your site is to write articles about your industry and business. This is something that practically anybody can do and should be first on your marketing plan. There are loads of article directories on the net that you can add your articles to and they will include a link back to your website. Also look for software that will help you with submitting your articles in order to speed up the submission process.

We would also recommend adding the articles to your website and this will help to increase the size and interest of your website. After all search engines will also consider your website size when ranking you. As well as that, people that come across your articles may like them and then link to your site.

2. Set up a Blog - This can be difficult to do but can be a great addition to any website. If you have a blog you will need to keep it up to date which will help to keep your audience coming back. If you do manage to keep a good, interesting blog then you will naturally attract visitors and links to your site.

3. Give Something Away Free - If you give away something free like a product, e-book or service you will gradually get people to link to you. If people like what you are giving away they will link to you in order to tell other people about it. Not only will this help in getting links to your site but it will probably help in improving your conversion rate.

4. Contribute to Blogs - Get involved in the web community. Most blogs will allow you to leave comments which will include a link back to your website. If you are regularly commenting and contributing to other peoples blogs you will gather a large number of links to your site. In addition you will also get seen as a valuable member of the community and a bit of an expert. This will encourage more people to link to you as they like what you have to say.

5. Syndicate Your Content - If you do place articles on your site then offer a syndication service on your website. This will allow others to publish your content as long as they place a link to your website at the bottom of the content.

An additional way to collect links is to offer reciprocal links. This can be a great way to increase your links but be aware that they may have less weight with the search engines and so will not be as valuable as other ways of building links.

A good way to start is to look at your competitors and see where they are getting links from and try to see if you can capitalise on their strategies.

Always remember that once you have the links it is important to have the content to back it up otherwise people will leave your site as quickly as they arrive.