Search Engine Marketing  •  WebSite Promotion  •  Website CopyWriting & Article Publishing Programs

Why Your Website Needs Links

by Rick Hendershot, Linknet Promotions

Most web-savvy people quickly learn why they need "links" from other sites pointing at theirs. Your inbound links are one of the most important ways of generating traffic to your website, and influencing the search engines.

"Traffic" is what linking is all about. Without traffic your website is useless as a tool for selling your products or communicating your ideas. Getting links from other websites is not the only way to generate traffic, but it is probably the most important one.

But how do links generate traffic?

Direct traffic from links
First, links generate direct traffic. Links from sites that share your target audience will be an important source of traffic to your site. A visitor to the other web site sees the link to yours, clicks on it, and becomes your visitor. Some estimates put the percentage of internet traffic resulting from this kind of link as high as 21% of total traffic.

Why do people click on these links? One reason is they may view a link to an outside source as an endorsement. They assume the webmaster is saying "Here is a source you will find interesting or helpful". They are looking for the kind of service you provide, so they click on the link to check you out.

But just as important is simple curiosity. Someone sees a text link with intriguing wording like "Powerful Cheap Advertising" or "Win a Free iPod" or "See Pamela Anderson Video" and, depending on their interests, a certain number of people are likely to click on it.

This suggests at least three things about your links.

First, you should get as many links as possible on pages your target audience is likely to be visiting. The more people see your links, the more traffic you are likely to get.

Second, your anchor text (the words that are linked) should be intriguing. It should be short and sweet, and suggest a benefit -- a reason for people to click on it.

Third, your links should be on pages that people actually look at. Having hundreds of links on pages that nobody ever looks at will not result in traffic -- at least not direct traffic.

Putting your link on a link exchange page containing hundreds of services similar to yours is not likely to generate very many clicks. This is why exchanging links with link directories is such a questionable waste of time. Web visitors rarely look at these directories.

Finding good pages where you can place your link is not always easy. One method is to systematically do searches for your most important keywords -- the search phrases people are likely to use when looking for your kind of product or service.

Many of the results will be competitors of yours. But one or two may be secondary sources such as directories or reference pages. Getting your link on some of these secondary sources is almost guaranteed to result in traffic, so it is worth the effort -- and sometimes the cost -- of getting listed in the resources that score high for your keywords.

Traffic from Search Engines
The second reason for getting inbound links is to impress the search engines. Most search engines use the quantity and quality of your inbound links to evaluate the importance and relevance of your site to specific keywords.

For instance, if you sell a product like Full Color Vinyl Banners, or you are a Real Estate agent servicing Kitchener Real Estate, one of your objectives is to rank high for searches done on your primary search phrase (and other similar ones). This will result in traffic because when people search for your important keywords your site is more likely to show up in the search results. The more inbound links you have that relate your site to full color vinyl banners or web promotion services, or "fill in your keyword here", the higher your site is likely to rank for these terms, and the more search engine traffic you are likely to receive as a result.

Using Articles to get traffic and impress the search engines
For the last three or four years embedding your links in articles has been one of the best methods of rapidly increasing your inbound links. It used to be that a well-written article, when distributed properly, would show up in many places on the web, and give you many inbound links as a result.

This has changed over the last two years as the number of article sites has increased - there are now hundreds of them - and the amount of content duplication has skyrocketed. The search engines are out to identify duplicate content and reduce its impact on searches.

In other words, effective article marketing strategies have changed a fair bit over the last year or so. Now it is important not only to get articles spread around, but to get them placed in the very best places - the sites with the most influence.

And it is also important to try to avoid the "duplicate content filter". There is no point in placing articles on hundreds of sites, if the search engines identify these articles as all the same and therefore just ignore 99% of them. There are now ways of getting past the duplicate content filter - essentially by making each version of your article unique. Instead of sending the same article to hundreds of sites, these systems will turn your article into different versions and send a different version to each site.

Blogs and RSS Feeds
Blogs, on the other hand, continue to get the attention of the search engines and are one of the most effective ways to promote your online efforts. Many blogs are updated on a daily basis and contain current information that the major search engines see as "news".

That means the search engines will often crawl an active blog several times a day. And any links embedded in current blog posts will be followed and recorded by the search engine spiders. This is especially the case with new blog posts. That is why it is very important to keep your blog updated and refreshed with new content every couple of days. It's all about keeping the spiders coming back.

At Linknet Promotions we leverage the importance of blogs by using our many targeted blogs to promote client products. We do regular posts relevant to specific categories (such as travel, real estate, finance, health, etc.) and embed client information in these posts.

This technique has been proven to be very effective over the last few years. And there is no reason to expect the effectiveness of blogs to decrease as time goes by. In fact the opposite is the case. As our blogs become more established, more content rich, and gain increased exposure and traffic they will become even more valuable sources of information for visitors and search engines alike.

Rick Hendershot is a writer and president of Linknet Promotions which systematically embeds your links in targeted articles and blog posts. This is an ideal way to build your inbound links in categories such as Marketing, Business, Health, Travel, Real Estate, and Finance.

Rick Hendershot
  President
Linknet Promotions Inc.

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