Click any banner on this site and set up a Host Gator account for only $4.95 per month. Use the Coupon Code WebHostDeal and get a $9.94 discount for signing up. That means your first two months are FREE!

Getting Links to Your Web Site

If you want your web site to rank high in search engines for the keyword phrase you are targeting, in most cases you will need links to your site from other sites. Depending on how competitive your keyword is, you may need to have quite a few back-links, as they are called. Here are a few ways to go about getting back-links to your site. I will emphasize the linking efforts that I use most of the time.

Article Marketing

Writing articles is a good way to get one-way back links, and it is the main technique I use at this time. These days I do two things. I will write an article and submit it to the largest article directory, which is ezinearticles.com. They have posted articles by over three hundred thousand authors. This site has a lot of credibility with Google because they have become the absolute authority, and each article is reviewed by a human editor. If the article is no good or does not comply with their guidelines then it will be rejected. So the content this site attracts is generally pretty good.

After the body of the article an author submits what is called a resource box. It is here that your links are displayed. You are allowed to talk about yourself and your site briefly. I usually put two links into this section, a link to my home page, and a link to one of the interior pages of the site I wish to promote. Bloggers and other people looking for content can copy and reuse your article. They are supposed to include your links when they do, so you can get a lot of extra back-links depending on how many times your article is reused. Another good site besides ezine is goarticles.com. I sometimes will write another article and post it there in the same way.

These days you get more out of posting on article directories if you use unique content each time. I have started to subscribe to a service called Unique Article Wizard, which has a monthly subscription cost. You submit three variations of the article and they change out each paragraph and make unique variations and submit these to article directories, blogs, etc. You also have a resource box with your link information.

Blog Comments

Posting comments on blogs is another good way to get back-links. If you can find blogs that are related to the subject of your site, you can make a comment on the blog and put your link information. You should try to make an intelligent comment that adds to the conversation. Leaving garbage like “that is really cool. You rock.” does not cut the mustard.

Other Linking Efforts

You can exchange links with other sites, and several years ago that would be a benefit. These days it is a waste of time. Google can easily detect link exchanges and even three way link exchanges, and they consider them a contrived and unnatural way to get links. I just usually ignore requests for these, but I still get several each day. Some people just don’t get the word. Link directories are another option, but I have backed off from these, except if I am doing a local web site and I find a local web directory to post on.