How to Get Links to Your Website
Search engine crawlers don’t just consider the content and outbound links on your site. They also place a strong emphasis on the links from other sites to your site, which are known as inbound links.
How Links Help
Google was the first search engine to use inbound links as a factor in search results- a feature it calls PageRank. PageRank is a 0-10 score (10 is highest) determined by the number and PageRank of sites linking to yours. All else being equal, the higher your PageRank, the higher your site will rank in search results. (Following Google’s lead, most other major search engines now also favor sites with a significant number of inbound links.)
To see your site’s PageRank, install the Google Toolbar (available at toolbar.google.com). The PageRank of any ranked site you browse to will appear in the PageRank icon in your browser’s toolbar. Sites with very little traffic will typically have no PageRank.
Good Links vs. Bad Links
All inbound links are not created equal in the eyes of today’s search engine crawlers. The inbound links to your site should, ideally, have the following traits:
* High page rank: The higher the rank of sites linking to yours, the better. For instance, a link to your site from a page on Yahoo! will have a much greater impact on your site’s page ranking than a link from a friend’s blog.
* Few outbound links: Inbound links from sites that also have many outbound links do little to improve your search engine rankings.
* Relevant content: Search engines tend to reward sites that have inbound links from sites with similar content. For instance, if you’re running a blog about investing, a link from another investing site to your site will be viewed favorably by search engines.
Natural Links vs. Artificial Links
Search engines can easily spot the difference between artificially created networks of reciprocal links and networks of links that develop naturally over time. Links in artificial networks connect to one another in a regular pattern, making it clear to search engines that these links did not arise naturally. Search engines favor a more haphazard network of links because it indicates that the links are genuine and not created solely for the purpose of improving search rankings. In other words, artificially creating lots of links to your site probably won’t help your search results ranking.
Getting Inbound Links
Though the best networks of inbound links happen naturally through word of mouth, you can help get your network of inbound links started by following these steps:
1. Focus on content first: The first step in getting people to link to your site is to offer helpful, high-quality content. Your content can’t just be good, though: it also needs to be unique in some way to convince other sites that your site is worthy of an outbound link. Sites that merely duplicate content that’s readily available elsewhere on the web won’t merit outbound links.
2. Contact relevant sites: Getting links from other sites is often as simple as asking. Send an email to the site’s owner or main contact person with a polite request that the site link to yours. Focus on sites with content relevant to yours. You’re more likely to get webmasters of relevant sites to link to you, and most search engines prefer relevant links to random ones.
3. Be specific in your requests: Don’t use a form letter when asking for links. Instead, write a “customized” email to each site you contact explaining why that specific site should link to yours.
4. Offer a link exchange: Offering a link back to the site you’re contacting from your site can convince other sites to link to you, especially if your site already has some traffic.




