As I look through my various forum links and review some of my company email, I keep coming across questions relating to generating inbound links to increase web site ranking.
No matter who you are, if you have a web site online you are always looking for ways to improve your link popularity. While most SEO practitioners will tell you that getting other related, non- competing, websites to link to you should be high on your priority list if you want better PR from Google or better rankings. Most web site designers miss the most obvious way to get these valuable one way inbound links. There is a way to do that plus generate additional content for your web site at the same time. You can get those quality inbound links while expanding your content which will bring the search engine spiders to your web site more often. By following my suggestions, you will be able to kill two birds with one stone; making your visitors happy while simultaneously increasing your rankings and making the spiders happy all at once.
Everyone is an expert at something.
It’s true, everyone has many years of experience at something. Maybe you have been in a job for the past 20 years and know just about every aspect of it, or maybe you’ve been making paper airplanes as a hobby for just as much time. Either way, you have 20 years of knowledge about something that others could be looking for information to read on those topics. Maybe you have already built a web site taking advantage of that knowledge and are looking to use it as a means to make a living, or maybe it’s about a hobby and you want to make a living with that. Either way, each of us has valuable knowledge that other people might want. Why not take some time, sit down and think about your business experience or hobby, and then write some “How To” articles about it? If you have a web site that already uses that hobby, or work experience, then it is a good way to add content to your web site, and it’s also a good way to help you get those inbound links you need to increase your rankings.
Using the Knowledge to Gain Link Popularity through Article Writing.
Let’s say you have 20 years of experience with a company where the only thing you did was conduct interviews to hire new employees. Let’s further say you were so good at this that it was the only thing your company wanted you to do. Because your results were so good, it’s the only thing you did. Maybe your prospects always worked out and were some of the most competent workers your company ever hired. You could write some articles on how to interview job candidates, or maybe write articles telling job seekers what companies are looking for in potential employees. If you have a web site for job seekers, or a web site for learning how to interview employees, you could use the articles for additional web site content. It’s widely accepted that search engine spiders can be conditioned to visit your site more often through your patterns of adding content. The more often a site updates, the more often the spiders come to visit. The more often they visit, the better chances that your website will begin to jump in rankings because it is viewed as a site that updates frequently and would be more valuable to visitors.
Articles to Increase One-way Inbound Links and Web Site Ranking.
Once you’ve written your article, you can submit it to places that will post it and offer it to other websites as free content. Most of these places will allow you to submit your own information for an “Author’s Box” or “Author’s Bio” area which they publish at the bottom of each article. Here you sohould include information about you, your web site, and LINKS you can add back to your site.
You see, the more you write, the more you train your ear to listen to the written words, and the more you learn what “sounds” right and what doesn’t quite seem to make sense. As I write an article, I am talking within my mind while I write. Yes, maybe I am a bit strange, but it works for me. I add my intonations and elevate my voice for emphasis, and I try to find ways to convey that in my writing. I’m no “expert”, but this is what works for me, and I have a decent amount of articles published, which means I must be doing something right. WebProWorld and Murdok seem to like me, or at least my writing style or the topics I cover. Maybe it’s just my sincerity LOL. Hey, I do my best. I try to offer the facts and ensure that I do my research before I write any article outside my field of knowledge. Character helps to build a writer, and a healthy dose of commitment to the reader doesn’t hurt either, but you have to find ways to build credibility and trust. Without those two things, nobody is going to read what you write, and if they do, they aren’t going to be likely to click on links back to your site. You have to get their attention and compel them to want more of your writing. That’s what will make your one-way inbound links even more valuable.
The Most MISSED Secret to Link Popularity through Writing Articles.
OK, so now you have the knowledge to write articles and submit them as a means to gain valuable one-way links to your web site, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to sabotage your own web site by failing to pay attention to the link you formulate in the articles submitted? The more articles I read, I tend to find a common error repeated by authors all over the internet. Now granted, these are writers, not SEO specialists, but this is just an example where it pays to round out your knowledge in many areas of web site promotion, ranking, and design. The BIGGEST mistake I see authors make when attempting to gain inbound links is the keywords they FAIL to use within those links. You see, so many writers worry about branding their name. That works just fine for writers building portfolios for selling their copy writing abilities where name recognition becomes the search term a searcher looks for, but if you aren’t a writer and are just using your knowledge to gain inbound links, then you need to use your keywords in those links back to your web site. It’s so simple that most times it’s overlooked. Many will also use a company name as the link back to their web site. Many of my articles have ended up that way because I overlooked the obvious too. Nevertheless, by following this method, it is a sure way to increase your company name, or your name, but does NOTHING to increase the link popularity for the keywords applying to your site.
Take for instance Sanders Consultation Group Plus. That’s my company’s name. We provide web site design services, image and graphical art services, business consultation services, SEO services, and just about anything else to get your web site promoted, up, and running. I tend to take a page-by-page view of our site and link popularity. What I mean by that is I take various areas, choose specific keywords, and search terms I want our site to gain in rank popularity. I have recently done some page optimizing for our web site design area; incidentally, web site design has been the most searched term for web site design services. It corresponds to one of the services we offer, and it’s the most popular search-term people use when searching for that type of service. Let’s say I write an article talking about web site design. The next article I write on web site design will include the company name, Sanders Consultation Group Plus, but it will also include the term “web site design” linked to the page we have recently optimized for our web site design services. As I already said earlier, this is such a simple concept that most people often overlook, and it can be a detriment to your link popularity goals. And as we optimize each area of our site, I will continue to write articles based on the area keywords and phrases, and will then place links in my Author’s Box to link back to those optimized pages.
It’s a reported fact that one-way in-bound links are worth more than reciprocal links. However, for many web site designers and webmasters, the ways to gain them has been somewhat elusive. Many fear that imparting their knowledge will give competitors an edge over the writer’s own business. What most fails to consider is the number of people that start out as the “do it yourselfer” and then realize there is more work than they intended to do. When they find your articles, you become a source for them to get their work done without their need to invest large amounts of time on the project. This is where the benefits of article writing will pay off, especially if you gain credibility and trust through your readers. Even if a competitor does notice one of your articles, sometimes they can be so impressed and overwhelmed that they’ll write things about you, include links to you, and you still come out on top. I’ve seen it happen before. Someone reads something so profound that it changes his or her life. They tend to tell others about the change and how the change occurred.
Articles are a valuable way to get recognition, gain reputation and credibility while increasing your link popularity. Done wrongly, and it will do nothing but increase your reputation and credibility. Done correctly, and it can raise your ranking popularity and bring you added customers on top of the other benefits. Take the time to learn how to write effectively. Write daily and learn the flow of your chosen language. Write truthfully and credibly. Make sure to give provable facts while keeping the hype to a minimum. Use keywords in your Author Boxes and find highly trafficked sites to submit to. Learn to write in such a way that engages your readers’ minds and makes them want to read more of your writing. If you can do all this, not only will you become a trusted expert, but you will also gain increased traffic to your web site and leverage your web site income goals through increased link popularity and higher search engine rankings. At the least, it will give you plenty of content to update your web site and increase search engine spidering.
James R. Sanders is the owner of Sanders Consultation Group Plus. He has been a webmaster and web site designer since 1997, and involved in self-employment ventures since 1992. He is presently a contributing author of NewbieHangout, and has been published through Murdok. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, web site designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today’s competitive global market. You can email him at webmaster@sanders-consultation-group-plus.com.
