Small business web site promotion - Site Links

Most people think of search engine optimization (SEO) as being interchangeable with web site promotion. Certainly SEO is an important part of promoting your web site it is by no means the only site promotion technique. In fact, your optimization efforts will be greatly enhanced if you can increase the number of sites on the web linking to your site.

Most search engines now use some sort of “link popularity” as an ingredient in their relevance indexing. Simply put, the more links you have coming to your site the more important it must be and therefore the more relevant it must be. Likewise, links from more important sites assume more relevance than links from less important sites.

The one place that may do you more harm than good is links from link farms. Link farms are sites that contain nothing but links. Many search engines now view a link farm as optimization “spam” which can get you deleted from some search engines. The links you want to your site should, whenever possible, be from sites with contextually consistent sites.

Creating links from other sites to yours can be a time consuming process. Your first step is to locate a hundred or so web sites that have similar content but that do not compete directly with you.. Next, create a links page on your site and add links to those sites. Remember to personalize the link by creating a short description of the site. Locate the web-master or marketing email address for the site so you can send them an email. Below is a sample of the email text you may want to use.

Subject: Reciprocating Site Link
Body: I appreciate you taking the time to read this email. Our web site (your domain.com) contains similar content to yours and I think we could both benefit from exchanging links. We have already added a link to your site from (your link page address) to your site and would appreciate it if you could add a link on your site to ours. If you think the reciprocal links would benefit both sites feel free to use one of the links below.

Again, I appreciate your consideration.

Link: Place one or two preferred links here.

The purpose of this email is to make it as easy as possible for the site you are contacting to add your link. You have already added a link to their site from yours to prove that you are serious and to provide a little incentive for them to give you a link.

A couple of notes: You do NOT want this to look like SPAM so make sure your email contains specific information about their site. “We have created a link to your page on (the subject of the page) at www.theirdomain.com/theirpage.htm”. If they think you are sending SPAM not only will they not even consider it they may report you for SPAM. If you don’t hear back from them within a couple of weeks you can try sending one more email but that should be the end of it. Take their link off your site and move on to the next batch of potential sites.

Just to give you an idea of how much effort may be involved, it varies but you will probably need 300 to 500 links to your site to make a real difference in your search engine results.

Another way to get links to your site is through the use of news releases. There are a number of sites on the web that specialize in online public relations. A good, news worthy news release can bring dozens of links to your site. One bit of advice. Don’t try to put out a news release that isn’t news worthy. It’s a waste of money. This is one place where hiring an expert is a good investment.

Although it takes time this last link creation suggestion is well worth the effort. Provide information on your web site useful to the same audience that will be using your products or services. Original material is better than information “borrowed” from other sites. If the information is useful enough other sites will link to it. You can promote this information through discussion groups, news releases and your link exchange program. This type of promotion is great if you have the expertise, time and patience to follow through.