Webupon

Link Building is a hot topic among anyone trying to become the next big thing on the Internet. Whether you are a budding small business owner or an experienced site owner, it’s impossible to ignore the importance of link building. One of the most effective ways to increase a site’s popularity in search engines is by increasing the amount of links pointing at the site. The site will shoot up in search engine rankings and thus generate even more visitors to the site. The cycle perpetuates itself once it gets started, but ongoing efforts are necessary to keep the site rankings as high as possible.

Link building is often outsourced to another party simply because new site owners don’t always understand the “secret sauce” necessary to make link building effective or they tire easily of the tedious manual side of this work. Truth is that any site owner with the time and desire can perform link building and save themselves the money they may have spent on having the pros do it for them. Most average site owners don’t realize that it isn’t always necessary to get a consultant to perform this work or pay a huge fee for a “Link Building Strategy Session.”

Submit the site to the search engines 

Putting all your eggs in one basket is always a bad idea. Countless site owners make the mistake of stopping after submitting their site to search engines or hiring someone on their behalf to do it for them. The truth is that search engine submission is free for nearly 90% of the search engine marketplace. Simply search for “submit URL to search engine” and you will be presented with a host of opportunities to either submit your URL to search engines like Google and Yahoo or to pay someone to do it for you. When you’ve done this once, you’ll know forever how easy this task really can be – start by learning how to add a URL to Google. The site SearchEngineColossus.com is a great way to get an idea of how vast the selection of search engines for which a URL can be submitted. The main reason why a site owner would not want to bet the farm on this technique is the fact that you cannot control the search engines. Simply by submitting a URL does not guarantee a listing on the front page, the top ten of search results, or the top one million search results either. As a matter of fact it may take months for a submission to show which is dependent on many different factors including only some of which the site owner can actually control (i.e. Search Engine Optimization).

Reciprocal Linking 

Asking another site owner for a link to another site on theirs is a kind of “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” type of theory. However, many site owners do not necessarily do this for obvious reasons as they don’t really want to showcase another person’s site with the same content when they can keep users on their own site. Some site owners do still see the value in reciprocal linking. There is a definite method to accomplishing this, mostly the method is simply common courtesy. For example, a positive start is having the link already on your site before asking for the reciprocal link or sending a thank you note when a reciprocal link has been posted. As always, a personal phone call is much better than an automated email. One of the best ways to find other sites that may be interested in reciprocal linking is to troll directories like DMOZ Open Directory Project.

Leave Links Everywhere 

Many site owners will post random messages in forums that are supposed to look like engaging comments or topics to discuss. These forum postings may allow link inclusion for such discussions but many do not for fear this will lead users away from their own site. Forum discussion participants want to see relevant topics for discussion and not spam from web marketers, so there is a valid reason why most forums do not allow links in their site to other sites. Most importantly be discreet when posting messages to forums, make sure to participate in the forum as a real contributor, and never go to a forum if your visit is only about promotion as this will backfire. Other free tactics of link distribution are using the site URL in an email signature leaving out the need for the site owner to even remember about the fact it’s a link building tool and not just a way to promote the business. Not only will the email signatures themselves generate the occasional curious reader of your email, but sending the email to a blog provides another way to get reciprocal linking.

Link Directories 

An amazingly easy and free way to build reciprocal links is by using relevant link directories. Many link directories have figured out that they can charge for their services so finding a free directory can be difficult. Many other site owners have created link directories and encourage submissions to their site without a fee. Great options site owners have include:

• DMOZ Open Directory Project

• List of Free Directories

• ISEDB List of Free Directories

Often these directories can be in the form of business directories targeted at users looking for a specific type of business. For example, a free place for green businesses to post a link to their site is in the business directory on FindGreenStuff.com.

Guest Books

When cruising the web, some sites have free guest books which allow visitors to leave a helpful and relevant note. A great way to make effective use of these guest books is to include a short but discreet advertisement for your business. One way to do this is to post a banner to the guest book. While guest books are becoming less common, they still are out there with an eager site owner waiting for your submission.