Increasing Your Google Ranking

How Link Building Can Increase Your Google PageRank and your Search Engine Rankings

Ok, now we are ready to start talking about the important factors that you need to consider when

preparing to optimize your site for Google.

The first thing that we are going to look at is link building. Link building, or link

exchanging as it is commonly refered to as, is a very important factor in not only Google but other

aspects of your internet marketing. Google seems to have placed the most importance on it at the moment.

Link Building takes a couple of forms: link exchanging and just plain

linking. The first is a simple “I’ll link to your site and you link to mine.” I will discuss

the pros and cons to this later. The latter is simply linking to another site because they provide

quality content that your visitors would find useful. Although it would seem that this does nothing

for your site, it is quite the opposite. Your visitors will see that you link to good resources and will

therefore come back time and time again to see who else you recommend.

So How Do I Start My Own Link Building Campaign?

Before you start, you must realize that link building is a time-consuming,

patience-requiring marketing technique. You will not see results within a week. It can take several

months before you notice a difference. So if you are looking for a quick fix, look elsewhere.

That being said, you will need to take several steps to ensure that your link building

campaign succeeds. I highly recommend visiting

Linking Matters

for a fully detailed walk-through on link building campaigns. I will give a summary here:

1. Analysis – Realize Where You Stand


2. Research – Find “Linkable” Sites


3. Link Campaign – Link to other sites and ask them to link to yours

1. Analysis – Realize Where You Stand

We discussed this a bit in “How does my Site Rank on Google,” but it is worth revisiting to understand

how this fits with link building.

Before trying to figure out where you are going, you should find out where you stand.

There are several things to look at. First is content. Does your web site have content that others

would actually care about? If not, then you are going to have a hard time getting others to link to

you.

There are easy ways to generate quality content for your visitors. The first is

articles. You are most likely selling a product or service. Well, shouldn’t you know something about

what you are selling? Think of things that are so common to you that you take them for granted, but

that others would find useful or interesting. Write a couple of articles, post them on your web site,

and voila, you have quality content! This will also establish your credibility in the market that

you are in, so it helps you in more ways than one.

Another easy way is to have a tips section. If you can think of simple tips that would

help your customers day to day, you could include this in your web site. Once again this helps you in

several ways. Customers will return again and again because there is fresh content, and others will

wants to link to your site to provide their visitors with your great resource.

You will also need to see where you stand with the search engines. Go to

Google.com and type in

“link:yourwebsite.com” and watch the results. These are sites that Google deems important enough to

count as inbound links to your site. If you are a new site, this may only include your own pages.

Once you are aware of where you stand, it is time to do some real research.

2. Research – Find “Linkable” Sites

The next big step is to find sites that you will want to link to and who will most likely

provide a link back to your site. First you need to set up a worksheet to keep track of potential link

partners. A simple spreadsheet or document will do the trick. You will need to keep track of the URL,

contact information, and importance of the link. You can rank “importance” by the quality of the web

site, its rankings in the search engines, and how visible your link would be.

There are many places to look for potential link partners.

First, go to Google and find out

who links to your competitors’ web sites. Do this the same way that you check yours, type

“link:theirwebsite.com” and see what comes up. Look patiently through the pages of results and find

sites that are not competition to you that have content related to your own. Add these sites to your

worksheet.

The next thing to do is go onto the search engines and type in the keywords that you

would use to find your web site. Search through the first 50 to 100 results and pick out web sites

that are related to yours but not competitors. Next use the same search terms, but add the words

“directory,” “portal,” and “link exchange” to it.

For example, if you have a home inspection web

site, you could type in “home inspector directory,” and “home inspector portal.” This will list

sites that are made specifically to list home inspection web sites. Add these sites to your

worksheet.

Continue searching in every nook and cranny that you can find. Go to competitors sites

and see what sites they link to. Search for back links on other related web sites. You will be surprised

how many potential partners you will find within a couple of hours.

3. Link Campaign – Link to other sites and ask them to link to yours

Now it’s time to do the real work. You need to start linking to the web sites that you

have chosen and requesting links back. There are several places that you could place links to their

sites. I will list a few and go over some details on how to maximize there areas:

1. Your Homepage


2. Your Links Page


3. Articles

Your Homepage is the most valuable real estate and should be reserved only for

major partners. For example, a home inspector may be certified by a company like the

National Assosciation of Certified Home Inspectors and

would there provide a link from his home page. Associations such as NACHI will provide a link back

to your web site in return.

Your Links Page is a page (or pages) of useful links and descriptions of other

web sites. You should not have any more than 15 or 20 links per page, and each link should have a

detailed description so as to help your visitors find what they are looking for. Each page should

have a specific category to avoid the “link farm” look (i.e. lots of unorganized, unrelated links).

Another great place to add links is in and around your articles. If it pertains to

the topic of the article, refer your visitors to another site that gives more information (like I

did with Linking Matters above). This

enhances your articles and is actually one of the best places for links to appear.

Once you have added the links, you need to start contacting the respective sites where

you would like a link back. This takes patience. Do not just BCC 100 sites with a template email.

You need to address each individual web site. Tell them what you like about there site, the fact

that you have added a link at such and such a place, and that you would appreciate a link back. You can

even suggest a place on their web site to link to you. Tell them why your web site would provide a good

resource to their visitors.

Patience and Perseverance

It will take time to start to see results with your link building campaign, but the

time invested in your campaign. Unlike other forms of marketing like pay per click or paid

advertising, the effects and results are long termed and will benefit your company for years to come.

Marketing techniques will change, web sites will change, but links to your site will always bring

you new qualified leads.