So you finally started your website. You have updated it with some high quality, unique and relevant content to make your visitors stick around so now what? Now all you have to do is get those visitors to come. So let them know about your website by building links that point towards your website and gain some link popularity.
There are a couple different kinds of links you will be interested in. The first is one-way links and the second is reciprocal links.
One-way linking generally happens for websites that have a lot of quality and unique content on site and these are the type of links that search engines give more weight to. A good technique to build that content is to post relevant articles and information on your site that visitors will want to read.
You can also visit forums related to your niche. Become known there by offering and asking for advice. Make sure that anything you post is related to the topics being discussed. If you post off topic items just for the sake of advertisement you will likely earn a bad reputation there and have your posts deleted. Offer value in your posts and you will gain a good reputation and get free exposure for your website.
Online quality directories are a great source of one way relevant links for your site. Keep your submissions confined to those directories of high quality. Typically there is a review fee associated with being listed there. Yahoo directory has a good impact for the link, but charges $299 annually. Another excellent option for a significantly smaller fee is the Authority Directory.
There are many free directories on the internet also, but the quality of the link you get from free directories is typically not that good. For example the link from one quality directory typically will equal hundreds to thousands of free directory submissions.
Article publishing is another option. You can write and publish unique articles related to your niche with a link back to your website. This is not a one and done option though. If you are pursuing this you must consistently write and publish articles for it to be effective.
Blogging can also be a way of building links to your site. By creating a separate blog and linking to your directory from within the posts you can create a few relevant links to your site.
Using reciprocal linking is another method of building relevant links to your website. To effectively do this you must find other websites within your niche and request link exchanges with the webmasters there. One thing to note is that the search engines have begun to discount the value of reciprocal linking.
Don’t discount link popularity. It is a very important part of building a website that is optimized for search engines. Just know that link building is not a one and done proposition. You must consistently build links over time for it to be effective for the long term. As your links increase so shall your search engine rankings and then your traffic.
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