Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Link Popularity - How important is it?

By Peter Slevin

The most important part of any internet marketing campaign is to obtain inbound, one way links from other websites. Search engines use link popularity as the main yard stick by which they judge the importance of your website. Finding good places to get links to your site can be a time consuming project, but there are plenty of reputable companies who can perform these tasks for you.

It is important that you try and achieve inbound links from sites that are trusted by search engines. The best way to do this is to use Google's page rank facility to determine how Google views the site. It is important to remember that 85% of internet visitors use the search engines on a regular basis. Search engines beat all other media in driving visitors to websites. Moreover, the majority of users believe companies found in top search results are major brands which equals brand equity for you.

There are lots of good companies out there to whom you can outsource your link building and article submission.

Getting links from the biggest directories on the internet such as Google Directory and Yahoo directory is a good place to start.

It is important to have a links from internet directories that have a good Google Page Rank. Submitting your site to the correct category in these web directories is crucial, as both pages should have a common theme.

You should try to obtain 'resource links' from partners and vendors for your business. You are more likely to be able to request and receive a link from their website because you already do business with them,

Writing press releases and articles and submitting them to newswire and article directories is another great way of obtaining links. You include your site URL in the resource box.

Add information and fresh content to your website on a frequent basis, and the search engines will love you for it. If you have a CMS system, I recommend that you add a new page every week. Make sure that it is quality relevant content.

Whether you enlist the aid of a company such as ours, or try to procure links on your own, quality 'inbound links' are becoming an increasingly important component of your direct marketing and sales activity to increase site traffic and drive sales. As I mentioned before, it is the holy grail of internet marketing, and the foundation upon which any successful website is built.

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