Okay so you’ve now created your website, you’ve chosen which keyword to target, optimized your web pages and made your site structure search engine friendly. Next comes the exciting part of promoting your website on the Internet!
One of the big mistakes that people new to SEO will do is they will spend many hours or worse, pay for software or services that will submit your website to tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of search engines – don’t! It's a waste of time and money and will get you nowhere.
Instead of spending time doing this, spend it productively by getting links to your site. This is the only way you will ever get better search engine results.
So how do you do get those first links in order to get your site indexed? Easy! Go to Google, type in the broad topic of your website and then start contacting the Webmasters of websites in the top 10 or 20 results. This might mean telephoning or sending an email to the Webmaster – do anything to persuade them to link to you. One thing you should always do when trying to get links to your site is to try your utmost to get links from relevant sites, i.e. websites that have the same or similar topic as you own website.
The hardest task for a new website is to get those first links. A popular method of getting inbound links is to set-up link exchanges with other websites i.e. you provide a link to their website and ask that they then provide one to you (this is also known as reciprocal linking). The reason it’s hard is because if you contact the Webmaster of another website to see if you can set-up a link exchange, then the Webmaster of the other website can see your website’s PR is 0 and won’t be interested in exchanging links – after all what’s in it for them? It’s a catch 22 situation, they won’t link to you because you have low PR, but to get a higher PR you need people to provide links to your site. It’s tough, but stick at it and soon enough you will start to see results – Rome wasn’t built in a day!
Also, if you have any other websites be sure to interlink these sites – a great method of getting those first few links!
If you’re finding it tough getting these initial links there is another option….
You can buy pretty much buy anything in life, this also includes links. Yes, it's possible to buy links to your website from link broking services. There are three major link brokers on the web, these are: -
http:///www.text-link-ads.com
http://www.linkadage.com
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
So if you're finding it very difficult to get indexed by the search engines, then you can simply buy the links to your website.
Questions to ask when purchasing about the quality and value of a link:
1. What is the value of the theme?
Is it a high competition/ highly monetized industry such as pharmaceauticals, gambling, or finance?
2. What is the overall power of the link?
Is it helping any other sites to rank high? How links from unique C-class IP addresses does it have?
3. What is the linking neighborhood theme of the site linking to you?
The "Topic" of the links that link to that site. - and a comparision of how close of a "linking neighborhood" is to your site's theme.
4. How many outbound links are on the page giving the link, and who else do they link to?
Lower the better and quality counts - skip the site with poker plastered all over it.
5. What is the format of the link, how many characters for anchor text and description do you get, and do you have control to change it?
Footer Link? Sidebar link? Run of site? Body text link? Pre-sell page?
6. Where is the link deriving it's power?
Does it have any .edus or .govs linking to it? How many unique domains and C class IP addresses?
7. What is the age of the site?
Older the better
8. Will the link pass any direct clickthrough traffic?
(Alexa is a litmus test here)
9. How many pages will the link be placed on?
Don't go overboard with run of site links now
10. Will the link go to a subsection of your site or your homepage?
Help your deep link ratio
11. Does the link "pass power"?
This is where the "gut feel" comes in. If a link is not passing any power, it is potentially worthless. It's no fun flushing money away, so develop an intuition for when a link is passing it's value and when it isn't.
I hope this guide has helped you get started with your website promotion. It’s not easy, but don’t give up! It does get easier as time goes by. Before you know it, people will be banging down your door asking for links to their website.
In my next guide I will explain why link anchor text is so important to search engine optimization.