Link Building - Gain Quality Inbound Links

Introduction

Perceptant101 started offering SEO services a number of years ago now and initially spent countless days and months trying to find shortcuts. Finally, we recognised that the highest quality, biggest impact and longest lasting links pointing to a website are not bought, begged for, or stolen but earned!

As human beings, we naturally try to find shortcuts, and SEO is one of these areas where many so-called shortcuts are freely available. Every so often, these shortcuts work and the end result produces the necessary returns. More often though, shortcuts produce short-term fixes or backfire leaving you in a worse position than you were before.

An inbound link is such example, take the shortcut and it could spell disaster. So, how do you ethically go about earning quality inbound links? Well, the short answer is by offering something of value. Value as in what's found on your website or the value you provide to other websites.

So, how do you do this? Well, below are a few simple ideas that have worked for us. Admittedly they take time to apply, but when done appropriately, almost always have a significant impact on your long-term search engine optimisation efforts.


1. Including a Blog

Popular blogging software, like WordPress can be quickly and cost effectively integrated in to your website. Blogs (e.g. http://www.perceptant101.com/blog) allow you to publish your own articles, ideas, thoughts and comments, which very quickly appear across the search engines. If what you publish is good, people will link to it and hey presto, backlinks begin appearing.

Primarily, a blog is a specific, targeted and popular way to show off your expert knowledge of your industry, although you have total control over how this is displayed, formatted and presented.

Integrating a blog in to your site will really contribute to your overall search engine optimisation campaign. Not only will it give your main site a boost by offering fresh content (and gaining inbound links from viewers), it will also help show you have your finger on the trigger, by displaying your current knowledge of industry trends, as they unfold.

Over time, industry principles will recognise the value of your information, and many will share it with others via a link from their own site.

2. Educational or Resource Sections to your Website

Including an educational section to your website provides a variety of benefits. Firstly, it adds additional pages to your website that can be optimised for critical key phrases. Secondly, it can reduce sales cycles by informing and educating prospects online, rather than over the phone. Finally, an educational or resource section to your site can generate a large number of quality inbound links, simply because the content that doesn't just scream "we are great" or "buy buy buy".

Instead, you are offering quality content that benefits visitors, for example by making their lives easier, helping them make informed decisions or staying on top what's happening in their industry.

Lets not forget, people and other websites will often link to valuable content without even being asked.

3. Informational and Industry Related Tools

There are countless examples on the Web today of free tools or information that people access and use on a regular basis. Mortgage sites are a great example of this, by providing free online repayment calculators and real-time loan comparisons, the same people revisit their sites on a frequent basis.

This same principle can be applied to almost any industry. For example, are you a provider of consulting services? If so, have you ever considered offering a spreadsheet that allows people to evaluate a certain aspect of their business? Another example is the building and construction industry, where a tool that allowed visitors to provide room dimensions, add features to the room and see what it might look like, could be of immense benefit.

You're only limited by your imagination, so have a brain storming session to discuss tools you use internally, which might also be of benefit to your visitors. If it's a innovative and useful, you might be surprised at the number of websites that will provide you with inbound links.

4. Expert Articles

It doesn't matter if you're a sole trader, SME or large corporate, chances are you have direct or in-direct access to unique industry knowledge or expertise. Did you know that by promoting this expert insight and opinion, you could gain inbound links?

It's highly likely, that the people in your business have important things to say about the industry - the latest trends, emerging machinery or services, current issues and where they see things heading. By encouraging these people to write articles (or having a content author write them on their behalf), and publicising them to a popular industry portal or magazine, you should quickly witness a rising number of inbound links.

The basic premise of expert article submission is that you are trading something of value for multiple benefits, one of those benefits being inbound links to support search engine optimisation.

Summary

One of the cornerstones of an SEO campaign is to gain quality inbound links to your website. Whilst the four above are some of the most prevalent ways to achieve this, we're cognisant there are many more, including video, training materials and interactive games.

The main idea here though is simply to reinforce the fact that you earn inbound links by providing value. Of course, it may seem like a lot of work, but your efforts will surely pay dividends in the long run.