Inbound links have the ability of increasing your popularity not only amongst searchers by also search engines. They are a valuable search engine optimisation tool as well. By increasing your inbound links you can effectively drive traffic to your site and raise your ranking.

Quality inbound links

Inbound links are really only beneficial if they are quality ones. Even if your focus is not on search engine optimisation you should still have quality inbound links regardless. They can bring in more traffic to your site and help with your conversion rate. However, asking for links needs a little finesse on your part.

First of all you need to do a little research in order to find out which sites to ask for links.. Look for inbound links that offer complimentary benefits instead of competition. You can use your own keywords to find sites. Once you have your list you can weed out the ones that are direct competitors and focus your attention on the rest. When you approach them rather pick up the telephone and speak ‘face to face’ instead of emailing. This will get you further.

Start by explaining your interest and what you think they have to offer you. You need to provide them with a good reason for providing a link so make sure that your site has something they find complimentary.

Links from search engines and directories

It is possible to find quality outbound links this way in fact finding a link from Yahoo for instance is highly desirable for commercial websites.

News letters or discussion threads

This outbound links are fantastic. Post articles on industry focussed forums and get links this way or write articles for industry trade ezines. Keep your articles active. Not only will you be adding to you knowledge you will also be educating your peers.

SEO Press Releases

Gathering outbound links from SEO press releases provides tons of opportunity for link development. Sites such as Yahoo News, Google News or other news search engines are places to investigate. If you can get these you will be getting great rankings within major search engines. They will also benefit your site when you issue a release as you are in turn providing highly relevant information for those searching for news worthy items related to your niche market.

SEO press releases means you often have the choice of distribution as well as being able to view stats on how they are performing over a specific period. They provide RSS feeds too and incorporate anchor text based on searches connected to target WebPages.

Links to avoid

Free for All links are pages where outbound links can be found without any scrutiny. They are at the end of the day useless to you. Getting links from Guestbook’s often allow HTML code in the comments area which means that anyone can create a link to their site. Link farms go without saying. From an SEO point of view they can be detrimental. You could also lose your credibility and reputation.

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