How Do I Increase Inbound Links?

By increasing the number of high quality links to your site, Google will slowly start to recognise that you are an authority on the particular keywords you are trying to promote. A successful SEO strategy will take into consideration all the different types of links: Value Links, General Links, PR Links, Authority Links and Social Media Links. It is an overall SEO strategy that takes into consideration the following points:

  1. Sustainable and ‘white-hat’ SEO techniques
  2. A focus on high value PR links
  3. Continually obtaining high value authority links
  4. Ongoing social media optimization and engagement

If your code has been optimised, the architecture and hierarchy of your site has been improved and search engine friendly content, matched to your target keywords/key-phrases has been added, but you’re still not seeing additional traffic, then it is likely that the search engines do not know enough about the content on your website. This is where the ongoing process of increasing the number of inbound links (back-links) to your site fits in.

The number of back-links is the most important indicator of the popularity and importance of your website. Google and most other search engines use the number and quality of inbound links to rank your pages and this directly affects your position in the search results. There are a number of methods that we will advise you on, and these will depend on budget, time and goals.

Social Media

The number of  businesses and potential clients who are using social media has increased significantly over the last 18 months, and as more and more time is spent engaging on the social media networks like Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and Pinterest, it is vital that your brand join the conversation, engage with your clients and increase awareness of your brand and services.

Increasingly these social signals have become a very important factor in measuring the importance of brands online, and therefore significantly effect your search engine rankings. Ensure that your social media campaigns include valuable and relevant content and that you engage on a regular basic with your audience.

Submit your site to Directories

It may be beneficial to submit your site to directories. These can often be a great start to building good quality links. It is important to use industry specific directories relevant to your business, plus any professional and regarded local directories. However bear in mind that since Google’s Penguin and Panda updates, many generic link directories were hit heavily and links from irrelevant or poor quality sites can be extremely detrimental to your Google search rankings.

Link Building

Link building when used correctly can be a solid and useful source of inbound-links. It is vital to ensure that the source of the link is relevant to your business. In order to get good quality visitors you should target sites where the stage in the buying cycle is appropriate to your product or service. For example, if you sell cameras then a link from a camera review site has a high potential to convert as buying is the natural next step to reading a review.

The ideal reciprocal link site should already rank well in Google and have a high page rank. This link will be within a content section of the page rather than in the footer or a links page. It will link to your target page rather than your homepage. Use relevant but natural anchor text, which means a combination of exact match anchor text for your target keywords, no anchor text contact just the url to the landing page and other related kewords or phrases as anchor text. Finally, check that the link does not have the ‘No Follow’ attribute. Beware not to target unscrupulous sites who sell or trade links from websites located in other countries or link exchange rings, as these will be penalised as part of the Google algorithm updates, Penguin and Panda.

If you need any further information or would like some help with your SEO strategy then please contact us here.