C & E Search Engine Tactics: 2. Sowing Your Links

We’re all familiar with the SEO mantra “ranking is determined in part by the number of pages that link back to your site.” While that is a big slice of the magic pie of good search results rankings, it is a concept that leaves many people wondering how all those wonderful links are created. Plenty of companies are poised to pounce on your money with their promise of acquiring links by the bushel for you, but do you really need to spend any money at all?

Heck, no! Here are five strategies that can be used to seed the web with quality links back to your site. (But no spamming!)

1) Be A Joiner:
A nice thing about social networking is that many sites allow you to join for free and you can instantly start looking for other people you may know on a particular network. When you build your profile page on a service such as Twitter, Facebook or Orkut, you can list your website(s) as a live link.

2) Weave Your Web:
There are plenty of blogging services out there and most of them give you the option of putting links to other sites in a sidebar. So if you have a couple of blogs out there and maybe a site for your business, make sure each of your sites includes links back to the others.

3) Holler Back:
Chances are there are lots of sites/blogs out there related to your business. Find some good, high-traffic ones. Then check out 1) If they have comments enabled and 2) If the comment form allows you list your web site’s url. Then, follow your favorites when you find their content useful, post a comment and include your url.
A few tips:
Do write a comment that is worth reading. While “Great post! Thanks!” is nice, it’s not really saying much is it? Why did you like it? How do you plan to make use of what you learned?
Don’t treat it like a Super Bowl commercial. Most bloggers have approval over which comments get posted and if I smell a “comment commercial” I tend to go for that spam button.
Do check the freshness date on the content you are commenting on. Posts more than a year old are not as likely to be read as something posted up to 3 months ago.

Another method for connecting with other sites is to utilize trackbacks and pingbacks. While this method does not necessarily put a link back to your site on another web page, it will let another blog know when you link back to it. Diligent bloggers like to know who is linking to them and it will help others to know you are out there. I included these because sometimes blogs do not allow for comments, only tracks and pings and it’s good to know what they’re about. Sometimes pings can be utilized via a service like Technorati to let it know when you have added new content.

4) Be A Critic:
Amazon has some great benefits to joining. You can sign up as an Associate and sell products through your web site and create a user profile that can include your website’s url. When you write a review of an Amazon product, your name is linked to your profile. So, if you take care to write helpful reviews for popular items, you can help generate that much more traffic to your site.

5) Be Your Own Press Agent:
If you took the advice of tip #1, then you have a ready-made media outlet already. Whenever you write new content for your site, update Twitter and Facebook and any other sites to reflect that. (Twitter has a function where you can incorporate your tweets into your Facebook wall. Useful in the way of saving time, but try not to create too much “clutter”) For example: “Jenn has just written a post about SEO on jennmearswebdesign.com”. Keep it short and simple.

There’s also an array of aggregate services out there where you can volunteer links to your content. Here’s a few:
Del.icio.us: Bookmark a link to your content on your page.
Stumble upon: Go to your page and click Stumble icon if you have it on your toolbar and/or embedded on your page.
Digg: Submit your new content’s url in the appropriate category.
Reddit: Submit your link.

Jenn Tip: Of course, you join all these services and before you know it, you’re dealing with an onslaught of usernames, passwords and invite emails. How do you keep it all straight?
1) Ensure your browser has the ability to remember signin info (on a secure, personal computer) and take advantage so you won’t have to keep looking up your password.
2) I actually use a similar password for each site. You may want to encrypt a little more than this, but it helps when I use a different computer.
3) Most services you sign up for send you a confirmation email. Create a “memberships” folder in your online inbox and store it there.
4) Maintain a text file that lists your accounts in alphabetical order and keep the usernames and passwords updated.
5) Organize how you are going to find all these sites. I use the bookmarks tool on my browser. You could also use another bookmarking service such as Del.icio.us and a common tag such as “Daily” or “Social”.

Above all, remember that quality link building is an ongoing, proactive process. Make the time to develop your network. Just create a simple goal like: “I am going to create at least 3 incoming links to my site every day.” and go from there. Good luck!