Get More Visitors To Your Website By Building Links

There are really only three factors which determine how well your website will rank in the search engine results. The first is the domain name. Having a targeted keyword phrase as your domain name has a positive impact on your search ranking. For example, if you wanted to rank highly for ‘Randburg hair salon’, using http://www.RandburgHairSalon.co.za as your domain name would be a smart move.

The second factor which plays a role in determining the search engine ranking of a web page is a combination of on-page elements, which boil down to where and how often your target keyword phrase appears on the page. The most important place is in the title of the page – the text which usually appears in the blue bar at the top of the screen. Also important are article headings and section headings. If your target keyword phrase appears in bold text or italics this can also help. Don’t try to ‘game’ the search engines by repeating your keyword phrase unnecessarily – this is known as ‘keyword stuffing’ and the search engines are quite smart enough to see what you’re up to.

The third important element is off-page factors, which means incoming links (or ‘backlinks’) to your website or page. It used to be that the domain name counted for around 20% of the ranking, on-page factors for around 40% and off-page factors for the last 40%. Some people maintain that the number of incoming links accounts for up to 90% of the search engine algorithms.

What you need to understand about backlinks is that they are not all created equal. The value of a backlink increases roughly with the difficulty associated in getting it. It’s easy to get hundreds of backlinks from low-value sites, but getting one or two backlinks from high-traffic sites is much more difficult. For example, imagine the value of a link from the home page of CNN or Time magazine.

The subject matter of a page which links to your website is also important. It’s more valuable to have incoming links from sites which are about the same topic as your site.

Most important are the words which are used on the other site to link to you. This is known as “anchor text” or “link text” and it is helpful if it contains your keyword phrase, for example “Randburg business directory”. A link like this, “click here” is not nearly as useful.

Google Page Rank is often used as an indicator of the value of a web page, although it’s not very accurate.

Some effective methods for getting backlinks include these:

1. Blog comments. Find blog posts which relate to your topic, and post USEFUL comments. The blog owner will usually allow a backlink to your site.

2. 3rd Party websites like Squidoo.com and Blogger.com allow you to insert links to your website. These kinds of sites are often highly ranked by the search engines, so you can take advantage of the traffic they get. Create a Squidoo lens or a Blogger blog about “Randburg Hair Salons” and write a useful article (or more than one!), with link to your “real” website.
Some other useful sites:
HubPages.com
WetPaint.com
Tumblr.com
Zimbio.com
WordPress.com

Do read the Terms of Service of these sites – some are stricter than others about advertising, affiliate links etc.

3. Article marketing – submitting articles to article directories is an effective way to get backlinks, not only from the article directories themselves but also from content publishers who use the article directories as a source of free content. The article directories allow authors to place a “bio box” or “resource box” at the end of each article, which can include a link to your website. Article marketing is most effective if you submit more than one article… dozens, if not hundreds of articles should be your target, over a period of time.

You don’t need to submit articles to all the hundreds of article directories out there – the top 5 to 10 will do nicely. Try to avoid submitting the same article to each directory – ideally, use a unique article for each one.

Some of the top article directories are:
EzineArticles.com
GoArticles.com
ArticleCity.com
ArticleDashboard.com
Buzzle.com

4. Local Directory Listings are another way to get backlinks for traffic and search engine rank. Look for local directories which give you a live link to your website, like RandburgLive.

Building backlinks to your website can be boring and repetitive. This is one aspect of online business which can be effectively outsourced. There are many businesses online who will happily do the work for you.

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