As you may or may not know, link building is an extremely important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)….Google has what is known as their PageRank which is a scale of 0 thru 10 on how “authoritative” a webpage is…each page within a website can have a different PageRank value…the chart below is an illustration of how PageRank works….

 

 

I typically say that if your Google PageRank is 0 – 2 it’s nothing to brag about it…you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you!

 

If your PageRank is 3 – 5 you are doing a very good job; keep it up and don’t stop…keep building relevant inbound links

 

If your PageRank is 6 – 8 FANTASTIC…you do not have to worry as much about building a lot of inbound links but you do need quality ones!

 

If you PageRank is 8- 10 God Bless You!!

 

 To find out what your PageRank is download the Google Tool Bar for Free - it has a PageRank Checker built into it (see below)

 

 

So the BIG question is always, “How do I acquire good, quality and relevent inbound links to my website?” 

 

A few years ago, I was very fortunate to be featured as an Internet marketing expert on the A&E Biography documentary entitled The Google Boys - there is a very good overview of Google PageRank in the A&E Show….In any event, the typical way you would go about acquiring inbound links to your website would include free directory submissions in the relevant categories (ex. Dmoz.org), paid directories like Yahoo’s paid directory for $299 a year, Business.com $299 a year and thru creating interesting articles, which contain links to your website, that are submitted to article directories such as eZineArticles and GoArticles..this is basically what “everyone does…”

 

We are NOT everyone…..

 

My team at Prime Visibility are some of the best and brightest in the industry and we are kicking butt when it comes to link building!  Here are some of the strategies and techniques we are successfully executing:

 

1.  Sample product(s) for backlinks……offer your product(s) in exchange for a yearly inbound link to your website.  The product value can vary depending on the value of the PageRank that will be linking to you.  For example, Perfume.net  offers a $10 gift certificate for an inbound link from a relevant site with a PageRank of 2-3; $15 for PageRank of 4; $20 for PageRank of 5; $25 for PageRank of 6-8 and $50 for PageRank of 8 – 10.  Obviously this won’t work if you sell $400 cameras or porsches; however you can get creative!  Think what you can afford to give away for some solid inbound links…

 

2. Offer Products/Services for reviews…..offer your products and/or services for review and the review itself will generate relevant backlinks to your site.  For example, AllFreshSeafood.com went to About.com and went to the Seafood Guide…..we sent some sample product to the person in charge of the Seafood Guide and as a result, AllFreshSeafood.com is One of The Top 10 Places to Buy Fresh Seafood Online (NOTE – besides substantial credibility, this listing/link is from a webpage at About.com with a 4 or 5 PageRank).  For Lauren Hutton, CleverCookie, MetroCandy and others they offer product for reviews and gain valuable inbound links for review sites and web publishers with high google PageRank

 

3.  Create the infamous “Link Bait”……By putting out content that people REALLY want to read and share, you get crazy links pointing to you and that content.  Two quick examples (a.) One Health-related client put out a list on Top 10 Reasons to Eat Breakfast in the morning – the first day it went out, the List received more than 26,000 unique visitors to the site; day two was about 16,000 then it went down but we got lots of links! (b.) I recently read about a massage company who took its staff to the offices of a highly stressed profession and offered the staff free massages….this got a lot of publicity and thus a lot of links pointing to it from blogs and news sites, which are credible sources for links.

 

There is more but this is certainly a great starting point….and I sense your information overload….

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.