Out of all the ways to get inbound links pointing at your site link baiting is one of the easiest. Link baiting is essentially a viral marketing technique where you publish something on your site or in your blog that will get people talking and cause them to link back to your site.
The beauty of link baiting is that the only work that you have to do is make something worth talking about. From there the rest of the work is done by visitors to your site or blog. If they see something worth talking about they are going to go to other forums, blogs, video sites, social bookmarking sites etc.. and tell everyone they know about this great information or tool that they just found at this site and they will link to your site.
Over the next few blog posts we will talk about some different things you can do to start link baiting on your own sites.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
What's Your Page Rank?
You must keep track of your own Page Rank, and it is illuminating to watch what Google's Page Rank Score is for various websites, there are two ways of determining this, listed in order of preference.
1. Download and Install Google's Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com. Once this is installed, you will be able to determine the page rank of every website you visit, including your own. The page rank is displayed with a green rank bar roughly in the middle of the Google Toolbar. The more green you see, the higher the rank. By mousing over the green rank bar, you can see the actual numerical designation, for example 5/10.
2. Go to Google's Live Directory (which is a mirror of the Open Directory Project) at http://directory.google.com. All websites listed in this directory display Google's Page Rank, as the green bar to the left of each listing. The more green you see, the higher the page rank. Keep in mind that only a small percentage of websites on the Internet are listed here.
1. Download and Install Google's Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com. Once this is installed, you will be able to determine the page rank of every website you visit, including your own. The page rank is displayed with a green rank bar roughly in the middle of the Google Toolbar. The more green you see, the higher the rank. By mousing over the green rank bar, you can see the actual numerical designation, for example 5/10.
2. Go to Google's Live Directory (which is a mirror of the Open Directory Project) at http://directory.google.com. All websites listed in this directory display Google's Page Rank, as the green bar to the left of each listing. The more green you see, the higher the page rank. Keep in mind that only a small percentage of websites on the Internet are listed here.
Link Building and Page Rank
Google does not rank links from all websites equally! Google gives more weight to links from some websites than from others. Google calls this score "Page Rank", and Google assigns every website on the Internet their own Page Rank. The PR score is from 0 to 10. Google reserves the highest ranks for what they deem the most important sites on the Web. For example Yahoo has a PR of 10, and the Open Directory Project has a PR of 9. Most other web directories on the web have ranks of 7 and higher. Google considers these links among the most highly valued when calculating your link popularity, and thus these websites have the highest "Page Rank". Getting other websites with high PR to link to you is critical to improving your own site's PR. Ultimately for a commercial website a PR of 6 is about as good as you could ever hope to get, with a PR of at least 5 being your minimum goal. When you achieve a PR of 5 you will find that many other websites begin to request link trades from you more often, because they value a link from you. The bottom line is that your own PR affects a lot of your overall marketing and site promotion. If and when you achieve a PR of 5 or 6, your search engine rankings will go up and you will be able to more easily trade links.
Other websites vary widely in terms of how much Google values them with respect to link popularity. Vertical portals are typically more highly valued than other simple websites. Free hosted sites, are ranked lower than paid hosted sites. Free-For-All link pages receive zero credit. Link Farms (like www.linkstoyou.com, and www.linkme.com) who link to you will actually penalize your link popularity, because they are a blatant attempt to hijack Google's link popularity algorithms.
Other websites vary widely in terms of how much Google values them with respect to link popularity. Vertical portals are typically more highly valued than other simple websites. Free hosted sites, are ranked lower than paid hosted sites. Free-For-All link pages receive zero credit. Link Farms (like www.linkstoyou.com, and www.linkme.com) who link to you will actually penalize your link popularity, because they are a blatant attempt to hijack Google's link popularity algorithms.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Emailing Link Trade Partners
Subject: Link Trade Request
"Greetings, my name is_________, and I'm the webmaster for (name your web site). I came across your (name their web site) whatever.com while surfing and I think we could both benefit by trading links. I have found that trading links is one of the best sources for increasing qualified traffic to my site.
If you have any interest in exchanging links with me here is my information:
URL: www.mywebsite.com
Title: The Title of Your Website (no more 4-8 words)
Description: The total description of your website. (no more than 25 words)
Just email me back with your info, and let's make it happen. I look forward to hearing from you.
Your name
Webmaster
you@emailaddress.com
"Greetings, my name is_________, and I'm the webmaster for (name your web site). I came across your (name their web site) whatever.com while surfing and I think we could both benefit by trading links. I have found that trading links is one of the best sources for increasing qualified traffic to my site.
If you have any interest in exchanging links with me here is my information:
URL: www.mywebsite.com
Title: The Title of Your Website (no more 4-8 words)
Description: The total description of your website. (no more than 25 words)
Just email me back with your info, and let's make it happen. I look forward to hearing from you.
Your name
Webmaster
you@emailaddress.com
Finding Link Partners
There are countless other who are interested in trading links. Finding them is not hard, but does take some time and effort. Below are several techniques for finding good link trade partners.
Surf- this is very straight forward. Go to Yahoo or your favorite directory, and start looking for relevant sites.
Competitor Link Pages- Go to the link pages of your competitors and look at the sites they are trading links with. If they are linking with your competitors, they are probably willing to trade links with you.
Do a competitor "link" check on Google- if you type in "link: yourcompetitor.com" in Google (remember the space between the colon and the url) and do a search, it will give you a list of websites that link with your competitor. If they will trade with a competitor, they are likely to trade with you too.
Use Link Trade Directories- There are a handful of directories of websites willing to trade links on the Internet. (Read Link Trade Vertical Portals). These include: www.links4trade.com, www.reciprocallink.com.
Advertise- Use some leverage strategies to promote your desire to trade links with other relevant websites. Advertise your link trade request in the Usenet and free classifieds. Use your permission marketing mailings to mention that you would like to trade links with other relevant websites. Trade newsletter ads with other relevant newsletters and use that space to mention link trading. There are lots of possibilities here.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Link Building, a Continual Process
This is a continual ongoing promotion program. With literally millions and millions of web sites on the Internet, the possibilities for reciprocal link exchanges are endless. Never be content to stop after sending an initial batch of link exchange proposals. The more links you trade the more traffic you get, and the higher your link popularity goes.
Creating an Effective Links Page
The link page for your commercial web site should be an automatic extension of the design of the entire electronic storefront, and should contain the following elements:
1. Header- The "header" of the link page should be designed as a headline / title for the section. Use strong advertising copy and create emotion and a desire for other merchants to participate.
2. Reciprocal Link Invitation- Near the top of your link page, you should invite other relevant websites to trade links with you. You should provide instructions to execute this, including which types of sites are eligible, what your link should look like on their page (URL, Title / Headline, Opening Statement / Description), and a contact email address where you can be reached regarding link trade requests.
3. Style- The style of the link exchange page should be clear and easy-to-understand. Consider using a standard directory style where website links are listed by (relevant) topics and subtopics.
1. Header- The "header" of the link page should be designed as a headline / title for the section. Use strong advertising copy and create emotion and a desire for other merchants to participate.
2. Reciprocal Link Invitation- Near the top of your link page, you should invite other relevant websites to trade links with you. You should provide instructions to execute this, including which types of sites are eligible, what your link should look like on their page (URL, Title / Headline, Opening Statement / Description), and a contact email address where you can be reached regarding link trade requests.
3. Style- The style of the link exchange page should be clear and easy-to-understand. Consider using a standard directory style where website links are listed by (relevant) topics and subtopics.
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