Search engine positions are largely driven by backlinks. Having a site that is search engine friendly helps and I would suggest that any business give thought to why they shouldn’t be using WordPress. Google will determine the quality of a site largely by the number and quality of links to it, from other websites. Sounds good so far.
So I can just go out and pay people to put links to my site from their site or offer to exchange links? Well that’s one solution but not a quality one. When working on gaining backlinks there really is no shortcut to hard work and time. You can of course employ someone, or an agency, to do this for you if you have the budget but with a little regular work you can do it yourself.
The first part to have in mind is that you must have content worth linking to, nobody is going to link to poor content. So once you have some decent content you can then start the linking process.For some of the examples I give you will also need quality content to place on 3rd party web sites.
There are a number of places that you can add links straight away without permission. Look for forums focussed on your speciality, join the forum, ensuring you read the forums terms of posting. In most forums you should be able to add a signature to your posts and within it a link to your website. If the forum allows this, ensure your link contains the key phrase you wish to rank for and links to the relevant page with the content on it. Then all you have to do, as an expert in your field, is answer peoples questions or join in the discussion on the forum on a regular basis. Do it naturally and add value, do not spam forums with lots of advertising you’ll get banned.
News sites also offer an opportunity for links. Every time you write a new piece of content for your site that is news worthy, not just selling something, you can add a link to it in sites like Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Sphinn, Stumbleupon or see this list for more social news sites. Again do this in moderation and do not spam the sites in question they will only ban you.
Article sites are another great way to gain links. You can write content on your field of interest and post them on article websites again with keyword rich links back to your site in the authors biography at the bottom of the article. Article sites have very strict rules and you should follow these carefully to ensure you’re articles are not removed. Here are some suggested article sites. The other benefit of article sites is that others can take your content and put it on their site with the stipulation that they maintain the links and attributions. Therefore with some well written articles you can build a network of links automatically.
Then come what are known as, web2.0 sites, these provide a convenient way to create links back to your site. These sites are regarded as high authority by Google therefore links from them carry some weight. Squidoo and Posterous are two such sites, very much like the article sites, the idea is to write unique content on these sites and link back to yours.
If you have announcements that are news worthy PR sites such as PRWeb can be another great way to gain links.
The same principle of spreading popular content and thereby growing links comes from the use of social media. Linking to your new articles and blog posts on Twitter can have a far reaching effect. But also if the item is relevant to others they may well link to it from their blog or reference it in their articles.
Commenting and guest posting on other related blogs also develops links, with comments you are unlikely to get keyword rich links but they will still help. With guest posts you can build not only links but also a reputation that can lead to referrals.
Linking is what the web was originally built on and it remains as important today as it was at the inception of the web. In addition, content is what we go on the web to digest. Quality content and quality links will feed each other to produce a site that cannot fail to rank highly in the search engines.