Tweet

SEO Tips: 10 Most Important Inbound Links You Must Have to Your Site

Guest post by: Donna Gunter

Article Overview: Search engine algorithms change frequently, but the one constant and reliable strategy in search engine optimization over the years is that sites with a variety of high quality backlinks trump their competition in the search engine results pages. These links can bring potential customers to your site, increase the number of visitors to your site, and dramatically improve your search engine rankings. Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

SEO Tips: 10 Most Important Inbound Links You Must Have to Your Site

As you think about search engine optimization for your site, don't overlook your inbound linking strategy. An inbound link is simply a hyperlink back to your site from a page of another web site. Search engine algorithms change frequently, but the one constant and reliable strategy in search engine optimization over the years is that sites with a variety of high quality backlinks trump their competition in the search engine results pages.

Why are these links to your site important? They can can...

-- bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link

-- increase the number of visitors to your web site

-- dramatically improve your search engine rankings

Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That's a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can.

Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

1. Directory links: Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ site are very valuable. DMOZ site is edited by human editors, and while it's free, it may take awhile for your site to be listed. Getting listed in Yahoo's Directory costs $299/year.

2. Press releases: If you're writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb site, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.

3. Article directories. Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles site, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. And, with a good resource box at the end of your article, you can drive traffic to your site at the same time!

4. Social bookmarking: Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your own content on these sites (like Digg, Reddit, and Del.icio.us), you get a link from the service. And, if you produce content that your readers love and bookmark to their followers, the link becomes that much more valuable.

5. Blog comments: Use blog-specific search engines (like Google Blog Search) to find blog posts on which to comment. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that's happening within the comments.

6. Social Media: Google is now indexing Twitter updates as well as social networking profiles from social networking sites. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you've got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.

7. Blog/podcast syndication. Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases, each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also get a link.

8. Video syndication. YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s description or on your profile page, or both.

9. "dot" EDU and "dot" GOV links. Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of weight. However, it's not easy to get links from either type of site.

10. Internal Links. If you have multiple web sites, or just a web site and a blog, don't forget to link one site to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.

Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings increase.

Related Articles
  Measure inbound links
  How Do I Make All Those Inbound Links Relevant To Improve My Ranking Blue Wave Design Studio
  Inbound Links are VERY Important!
  Link Popularity
  How to Determine the Value of a Link
  10 Ways to Improve Your SEO Ranking Through Inbound Links
  How Important are High Search Engine Rankings?
  Automate your link building process for successful SEO
  Link Building Tips
  Search Engine Optimization for Google, Yahoo and Msn
  Diversify Your Link Building Efforts
  One Way Link Creating, Very Little Will Be More Advantageous For Getting Traffic
  Top 5 Reasons Your Search Engine Rankings Dropped
  How to generate lots of high quality inbound links
  Link Exchange Strategies – Tips to ensure a WIN-WIN Link Strategy for your Website
  Quality inbound links for traffic and ranking
  SEO - Back to Basics
  You Need Inbound Links To Your Website
  What is Link Building
  Get Backlinks from Relevant Sites to be No 1 on Google

Article Tags: backlinks, dofollow backlinks, high pr backlinks, inbound links, linking strategy, one way backlinks, seo backlinks



Related Forum Posts
Business Tips - How about: Tips for managers to handle employees more effectively? Tips on how to deal with difficult customers? Tips on how to deal more effectively with suppliers? The only three I have in mind right now, but will try to come up with something else. Chris
Re: What works for you? - Hi Yinka, I work better under pressure of deadlines when I am doing something for other people. However, I like to have the leisure to develop my own projects. The first case is what Stephen Covey calls a "Quadrant 1" activity ("Important and urgent") whereas the second case is a "Quadrant 2" activity ("Important, not urgent"). We should aim to make as much time as possible for Q2 activities so that we can develop our own projects. Easier said than done!
She Wins, You Win: The Most Important Rules Every Businesswo - She Wins, You Win: The Most Important Rules Every Businesswoman Needs to Know Gail Evans, 2003 Also author of Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman Inside jacket: Every time a woman succeeds in business, every other woman's chances of succeeding in business increase. Every time a woman fails in business, every other woman's chances of failure increases. Gail realized that one of the most important elements of the men's game, which was missing from the women's, was support: The boys know how to take care of one another. In order to create lasting success, women need to help one another and band together as a team. TOC The Woman's Team Why you must play on the woman's team How to join the team Tips for the team 1. Be a mentor 2. Rainmake 3. Uncover and share information 4. Keep quiet 5. Unite with all women at all times 6. Make team-related choices 7. Weave a female web Challenges of the Team Twelve team members to watch out for The eleven most common team questions (and answers) Conclusions Acknowledgements My own view Haven't read this yet, but it seems like she's advocating an "Us against them" mentality. Neverthless, networking with fellow women - and men! - only makes good sense.
Re: How can I promote my site? - There are various useful techniques for promoting a website. In SEO the techniques could be "white hat" and "black hat" techniques. White hat techniques includes following techniques to promote website as per the search engine rules. - Search Engine Friendly Tags - Website submission to Search Engines - Website Submission to Social Sites (Like twitter, Facebook) - Articles Promotion & Press Release Promotion - Quality Directories promotion - Contribution to Blogs, Forums Black hat techniques can reduce website strength in the search engine and can treat site as spam that could be following. - Keywords Stuffing. - Hidden Links - Maximum Links of unknown sites.
Import / Export Business - I am in the benign stages of starting an import/export business and would like to know the most important factors in the early stages of the business. 1)The most secure method conduct financial transactions 2)Important issues with development of a website?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Local Marketing: 3 Simple Low-Cost Strategies

Work at Home Moms and Their Bad Rap?

BUILDING A HIGH PERFORMING TEAM

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.