Building Web Traffic -Getting backlinks
Now that we understand the importance of backlinks to your site, let us explore some of the ways for getting backlinks.
Perhaps the easiest is if you already have another website that has some amount of visibility, then you can simply add a link on it to your new site. Try to make the link relevant to your site though. If you must start from scratch, then you can try the following:
1. Visit forums that have some relevance to the content of your site. Post on the forum and interject a link to your site when it is appropriate. Don’t violate the rules, and don’t spam. Make sure your post is relevant, and linking to your site is seen more as adding value than simply trying to advertise your site. Or instead of trying to include the link in the main body of your forum submission, include it in your signature and profile (if there is a profile facility).
2. Find sites that are related to yours in terms of content or service, and make a request to the webmaster to do a link exchange. This means you will include a link to the other site on yours, and he/she will in turn link to your site from their own.
3. Make comments to posts on various sites/blogs and where appropriate include a link in your comment. Usually you are given the opportunity to specify your website along with your name when making the comment. Be aware however, that quite often when you include a link in a comment, the link is a nofollow link so won’t be counted towards your page rank by search engines. Webmasters do this is to cut down on spam. But a link out there in your comments still can be useful, as someone reading it might just decide to check out your link, especially if your comment is sensible and relevant.
4. Alert sites like Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon of your page(s). Each of these sites basically allows you to share your content with the world. The way they work, is by submitting a title and a little description of what your page/site/article is about. Your entry is then visible to the thousands of others browsing these sites, and they may either rate it good or bad. The more good ratings you get, the more visibility your entry gets. Now, keep in mind that even if your entry doesn’t get anywhere in terms of popularity on these sites, it still helps you because the search engines love these sites, and you’ll quickly become more visible in the results of search engines like google. Bear in mind that if the site is a nofollow site, then it won’t do much to increase your ranking in the search engines. However, even with the nofollow sites, it does seem to help in getting your site indexed, in case your site is not yet indexed.
5. Bookmark your site. Bookmarks count as incoming links. There are sites that actually allow you to store your bookmarks online. This can also be good for getting backlinks to your site. Join up with a site like del.icio.us (or delicious.com) and add bookmarks to the sites you want promoted. Search engines are able to see these bookmarks, so it can possibly improve your search rankings. However, these bookmark links could very well be what are called nofollow links, which means that they don’t carry weight in terms of page rank. In another post I will explain how you can determine if a link is a nofollow link.
(You can see more example sites that allow link sharing by putting your mouse over the Share/Save icon at the bottom of this post).
If you have any other ideas, please do post them in the comments, or even do your own post submission.
Tags: building web traffic, getting backlinks, getting incoming links, seo