One of the things the search engines look at in determining where to rank your website are the backlinks. Backlinks are simply defined as links to your website. The more sites are linking to you, the higher you will rank and the more traffic you will get. It’s actually a little bit more complicated than that since the search engines also look at quality of the sites linking to you and other factors. For this discussion, simply know that generally the more legitimate websites that link to you the better you will do in the search engines.
Here are some easy things you can do right now to get backlinks:
- Get a profile on social networking sites like Facebook and My Space even if you don’t intend to use the account. They provide a place for you to provide a link
- Get set up in online yellow page sites like Superpages.com
- Get profiles in niche directories targeted to your industry and to your local community. These sites often have a free account. They will try to upgrade you but you don’t have to upgrade if you don’t want to.
- Get profiles on video sites like You Tube
- Participate in forums in your niche. They often have a signature file that you can use to link to your site.
- Get a profile on review sites. Believe it or not, even Amazon.com will let you get an online profile and list your website
Also, keep anchor text in mind when you are getting your backlinks. Anchor text is simply the text that shows up in your link.
This is a good link with proper anchor text:
A bad link would be something like:
Check out my website click here
So, go add those backlinks and increase your traffic today. Of course, we can also do this for you if you don’t want to mess with it.
Dayton SEO Services is owned and operated by Carlos Scarpero, a West Carrollton, Ohio based internet marketer. Carlos has over 10 years experience in building websites, blogs and pay per click campaigns. Put his internet marketing expertise to work for you today!
One thing that I think is crucial is to understand that while setting up profiles on social media sites or YouTube is important for SEO, doing it solely for that reason is bad marketing. Before you dive into social media, you need to address several important questions:
1) What are your company’s goals for social media?
2) When social media directs people to your site, does your site have specific call to actions?
3) Do you have the resources to maintain the social medias?
The last is VERY important, because while setting up SOCIAL media is easy maintaining it requires time and effort. If you’re not maintaining these sites you have people who are trying to talk to you…but you aren’t talking back. Ignoring your customers? You wouldn’t have a customer service line if no one answered. Social media sites are no different than a new method for customers to reach your company. Don’t set up a social site in the name of SEO, if you haven’t thought this through.
Thanks for the great tips. I decided to add another article that discusses this a little further.
http://daytonseoservices.com/dayton-internet-marketing/