Non-Geeky Link Building Tips for Small Business Owners
If you run a small website for your business then the chances are you have a million things to think about. Having just come across the rabbit hole that is SEO, link building probably seems like a challenge on par with running a marathon backwards. The problem is, link building is time consuming and not always that straight forward. In fact, it can be incredibly difficult.
Here I have put together some realistic methods and tips that you can use to improve your link building skills, and how to get backlinks. These ideas are just a starting point, don’t feel bound by these!
Use your connections.
Just because you are building links online, doesn’t mean you have to do everything online. If you have a website then the chances are so do your suppliers, customers and any other industry relations out there. Sometimes with your best relations you will simply be able to ask for a link from their site, other times you may have to offer them something. Either way picking up the phone is nearly always more successful than emailing.
For example, why not try offering testimonials? Using your industry connections, get in contact with any suppliers of software, hardware, office supplies etc and offer to provide a testimonial for their website because you like the product so much and they will most likely link to you. If not you can probably get away with politely asking afterwards.
Use your community
If you have an active community of users on the site already, why not try running a competition that involves getting users to create videos or tweet and shout on Facebook. This works especially well if you have a youthful or tech minded userbase combined with some good site content. The added social buzz will help generate traffic and links to your site. Remember, the overall aim is traffic, so even if it won’t always strictly benefit SEO it could still be worthwhile.
Copy your competition
This may end up becoming slightly more technical, but a starting point of any link building campaign should be proper competitor analysis. SEO tools like Yahoo! Site explorer or Yahoo site explorer alternatives make competitor backlink analysis incredibly easy, even for novice link builders. Gaining an idea on what your competitors have done to beat you in Google is crucial and can unveil some fantastic link building strategies, after all they must be working if they are above your site in the search engines.
The author James Blackwell runs the website Blog Design Services and writes about SEO, web design and online marketing.
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15 Responses to “Non-Geeky Link Building Tips for Small Business Owners”
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We can add in Google Local Business Listing in this list.. any how good points..
Because netlinking is building relations for many small businesses, producing great content that add value will naturally attract links.
Non Geeky Links: Really approachable… but sometimes becomes really frustrating and stagnant after a time.
Whenever I launch a niche site my backlinking strategy is to duplicate whatever I can from my competition, then find ways to improve on it. All’s fair in love and backlinking!
Using your offline connections is good advice. We all need to remember sometimes that even though our businesses may exist mostly or entirely on the web, there are still people behind the scenes.
I think offline relationships are more likely to link to you as well rather than relationships you know only online or initiate online. Going to actual networking events and discussing linking sites to the people you meet could probably result in several links at each event. Good ideas.
Great article – any help for web based businesses is a boon, and these are all excellent tips to optimize any web based presence.
Great article. I completely agree with testimonials. Reading realistic testimonials from satisfied customers is one of the main anwers to my doubts when I am buying something online. Most of the time they influence my decision and I make the purchase. I’m pretty sure it applies to many people like me who rely on testimonials or online product reviews.
The artilcles does true. But i don’t think it will be satisfy to fulfill our backlinks need because today people spend more effort to use link building service. Could it still work againts that ?
Oh, you can add your website in you calling card and add a little note to it that says, please share this online. Works for me.
I like this tips, but it just work 50% for me.
cool!!! helps alot
That’s Great!!
Thanks for sharing such a nice post.
I like the title and the content too. When you start up a business it is important to maximize on what you have around you so as to see the results they can offer you before you opt on going elsewhere. Starting to market yourself around people familiar with you is the number one step when you start up any business.