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  • How do you get inbound links to your Web site?

How do you get inbound links to your Web site?

June 16, 2008 / Dave Taylor / SEO & Marketing, Web Site Traffic Tips / 16 Comments

I have been diligently applying all the search engine optimization techniques you talk about, Dave, but I’m still unclear on one key technique: how do I have more people link to me?

Let’s define our term first. An “inbound link” is a link that points to any part of your site from somewhere else on the Web. For example, if you were a blogger and wrote a blog entry encouraging people to check out the personal finance site http://www.RealLifeDebt.com/ then your link would be, from your perspective, an “outbound link” (since it would take someone away from your site) but an “inbound link” from the perspective of the Real Life Debt site. Make sense?
There are also “internal links” that are inter-page links on your site, but I talked about those last week too, and highlighted the importance and value of using “organic dog food store” rather than “store”, for example, as a way of helping teach the search engines what appears on those particular pages.
Remember too that the text people use when they link to your site is critically important, so a link to the Real Life Debt site that just repeats the URL is of far less value than a link that says “personal finance blog” as the text. If you’re geeky and actually code your outbound link HTML, it’d look like this:

<a href=”http://www.RealLifeDebt.com/”>Personal Finance Blog</a>

But. Back to our topic!
The very best way to get inbound links for your site, hands down, is to continually produce the very best possible content that is of genuine value to your customer community or readership. When was the last time you added new — fresh, unique — content to your site, speaking of which?
Another savvy strategy is to interview online personalities. You ask if they’ll participate, they (95% of the time) say yes, you send them a half dozen questions via email and then, when they’ve answered, you publish it as a Q&A and notify them it’s gone up on your site. Quite naturally, most folk will then let their community know about the interview by blogging or otherwise writing about it. And linking to you. Neat, eh?
Many people extoll the virtue of online directories, and a quick search at Yahoo.com (the original online Web site directory) reveals that there are thousands of ’em online now. The problem is, many of them are really just what Google calls “link farms”: sites that exist for the sole purpose of offering links for search engines, not humans. That’s not going to be a benefit, so if you do consider online directories, I strongly encourage you to only request inclusion in those that are legit and well known.
You can also offer to write for other sites, either by producing articles for syndication services like eZineArticles.com or by directly emailing bloggers and site owners, asking if they’re interested. If they are, write up something pithy, thoughtful and as neutral as you can make it (e.g., do not just send them a press release) then include a one-sentence bio at the end that has a link back to your own site (see HTML code above)
One way that it might seem you can get inbound links, but in fact can’t, is by adding tons of comments to other blogs or forum sites. Most of the best are now aggressively moderated (which means your off-topic submissions will just be deleted) or use what’s called a “nofollow link”, a special additional HTML attribute that tells the search engine that the following is indeed a link, but that it shouldn’t be considered as a genuine “outbound link” from an SEO perspective.
Now adding good comments on other sites is always a good idea, but the real benefit there is raising your visibility in the marketplace. Most will let you have a link to your site included, but that’s a best practice for your standing in your community, not something that’s going to improve your search engine results.
Those are the key methods. Oh, and one more: ask your friends to link to your site too, where it is appropriate and makes sense.

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

16 comments on “How do you get inbound links to your Web site?”

  1. rachel says:
    October 17, 2012 at 1:55 am

    great blog: avoid anchor text links like the plague! we dropped pages when google ran the last update!

    Reply
  2. Angel says:
    September 7, 2011 at 4:32 am

    How about the importance of PR and no-follow/do-follow? I would be interested in reading an article from you about this subject.

    Reply
  3. i@n says:
    April 30, 2011 at 7:58 am

    it’s good to know this page have PR4 🙂

    Reply
  4. Paul says:
    April 10, 2011 at 10:38 pm

    I just saw a notification that a blog I had commented on linked back to me. I don’t have the slightest clue what that means or what I am to do with it. I configured something to show the last 10 links, or whatever, and now what? Help? Thanks!

    Reply
  5. i@n says:
    January 5, 2011 at 3:45 am

    will large outbound links than inbound lowered your serp?

    Reply
  6. Dan says:
    May 13, 2010 at 5:15 pm

    Great info and this can be a good SEO start for new website owners.
    Best regards
    Dan
    The Independent Antivirus Community

    Reply
  7. Yves says:
    March 17, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    Yes getting inbound links are truely a very important aspect of getting a good rank on search engines. Nice article.

    Reply
  8. Dave Taylor says:
    January 4, 2010 at 8:17 am

    Tushar, so pray tell, don’t leave us hanging. 🙂 What other ways do you use to get backlinks?

    Reply
  9. Tushar says:
    January 3, 2010 at 11:31 pm

    Good tips for getting inbound links. But, I think there are many other ways to get backlinks that are not mentioned in the post.

    Reply
  10. Dave Taylor says:
    July 6, 2009 at 8:30 am

    It’s a no-follow blog. People just don’t seem to always get the difference. Ironic, eh?

    Reply
  11. Brett says:
    July 4, 2009 at 7:02 am

    i’ve just found your site and am learning alot. After reading this post, i’m tempted to ask, is yours a ‘follow’ or a ‘no follow’ blog? 🙂

    Reply
  12. nick degand says:
    March 29, 2009 at 6:34 pm

    Cool Site!!!

    Reply
  13. LBH says:
    February 10, 2009 at 7:20 pm

    This was very educational, i was wondering why my site wasnt showing up on search engines. thought i was doing everything right, and it turns out i was. I just have to wait awhile

    Reply
  14. JustEtc says:
    January 27, 2009 at 1:38 am

    Create a press release and submit to paid/non-paid press lease publishers
    Submit to free or paid directories
    Submit to yahoo directory
    Create multiple web-sites and link to each other
    Ask other web-masters to exchange links
    Provide useful content/service in your website – many people will intentionally link to you

    Reply
  15. Ravi Ahuja says:
    October 20, 2008 at 3:50 am

    I am always interested in getting link from commenting on blog post because first blog post teaches you some thing and get you a link back but my question is when site is using “nofollow link��? then what to do this do not give us a backlink.

    Reply
  16. chris says:
    July 28, 2008 at 8:41 am

    Nice information. I really enjoyed this post. I myself have realised that in some cases while the link farms may not have a positive effect they can also have a negative impact.

    Reply

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