Link Building to Bring Traffic - Part 1
You may think your site is the best thing on the planet, well maybe it is, but if people don’t know about it and can’t see it, then the money and time that you have invested into it are worthless. Building a powerful online presence is much more than building a great website.
Being popular on the internet is much more than basic web knowledge, you need to know how to deal with search engines, and know something about link building.
Traffic building and link building has changed over the years. One of the first thing you would do would be to submit your site to search engines. Some still recommend that, I don’t. I prefer to let the search engines find me, with a little help.
FYI, I would never pay a service to submit my sites to the search engines.
Directories:
Since linking from a directory will help your ranking and get you more traffic, be sure to list them in free Open Directory Projects like DMOZ, which is maintained by human editors. The problem with getting listed in DMOZ is it can take years or it may never happen and you’ll never know why your weren’t listed.
This hierarchical directory provides content feeds to all the major search engines. Plus, it provides a link to your site from an information hub that Google deems important.
Yahoo! Directory is another important directory to be listed in, but it does cost money. Real humans will read and too often, pare down your 200-character sentence, so be very careful and follow their instructions.
Use less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don’t have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping.
You may find some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. Be sure to register with these. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member sites.
Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link, it may bring you the kind of targeted traffic from an info hub you need. Be careful though, as Google punishes those who actively sell links from their site.
Beware of directories that solicit you for “upgraded listings.” Unless a directory is widely used in your field, your premium ad won’t help, but the link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking. Marginal directories come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up. Don’t try to be exhaustive here.
Practice reciprocal linking. Find complementary websites and request a reciprocal link to your site, especially to your free service, if you offer one. Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites, so you don’t send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door.
Your best results will be from sites that get a similar amount of traffic to your site. High-traffic site Webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don’t have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages.
Only do reciprocal linking with sites that you think are consistent; do not do reciprocal linking with spam sites because this will naturally damage your site’s reputation. There are also directories that ask for reciprocal linking in return for your listing.
You can also make a trade of benefits in your reciprocal linking. If a site is really in theme with your site, ask for a front page – top page listing and have it done for them too. This way you will generate more traffic for each other.
Commenting on DoFollow blogs is one of the most productive link building method right now. I suggest you comment on blogs listed on the DoFollow Blog Directory. If you need a better understanding of what dofollow blogs are, I suggest this dofollow blog information blog.