Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are one of the most important factors that Google evaluates when ranking your website. These are links from other websites to your website without a reciprocating link from your website to theirs. The quality and quantity of your inbound links both count toward Google’s evaluation of your website.
So, how do you get inbound links? Here are some ideas to get you started.
- Get listed in DMOZ
- Get listed in Google Places and Google Maps
- Get listed in the Yahoo local directory (local.yahoo.com)
- Go to friends and friendly businesses with websites and ask them to link to you. It is OK if you arrange for reciprocal links but they aren’t nearly as valuable as one way links.
- Look for directories in your industry. They are easy to find. If you are a hypnotherapist, Google “directory of hypnotherapists” and variations on that theme. You will have to evaluate each directory you find, and go through their process for getting listed or claiming your listing. Sometimes there is a cost involved, usually not.
Building up your backlinks is time consuming, but worth the effort if you are concerned with your search engine rankings. If you don’t have the time or inclination to do it yourself, give me a call. We have developed a list of over 200 websites and directories on which we can get valuable one-way links to our client’s websites. If you’d like, we’ll use our list and do the work for you. Since we already know what sites to go to, we can do it more quickly than you can.
There is a lot more to talk about in terms of the quality of the links you get, and how to maximize their value to you. Perhaps I will discuss that in a future post.
Happy Holidays
Olin Robie
Google Chrome is faster, smarter and safer. I use it on all my computers and recommend it to all my clients.