Getting links to your website raises your search engine ranking, ideally getting you more visitors (which you can translate into more sales, leads, etc.). The questions is, how do you get links?
In our experience, getting links is like getting votes in high school to be the homecoming king. You can get links (votes) through a variety of methods- being popular, funny, weird, different, original, or just going out and asking for them. You can even pay for them, although that is generally frowned upon by Google, and the homecoming court committee.
In the video below from Google Webmaster Help, they answer the user submitted question of how to get more organic links.
Organic Link Building according to me, is one of the most difficult tasks for SEOs (search engine optimization professionals). Can you please list 5 effective ways of organic link building other than building great content
The author immediately passes this as a false dichotomy, since building great content IS one of the most effective way of organic link building.
Moving on, the author goes on to list effective ways to achieve organic (non paid) link building. I have summarized them below.
- Controversy – This is the worst way according to Google. “There’s a few people who’ve made a profession of hating everybody, but they aren’t very much fun to hang out with”
- Participate in the community - showing up, participate, and answer questions. If you can add value by answering questions to common problems people have in a subject you’re well versed in, people will find you and your site knowledgeable, remember you and possibly link to you. You know that guy who knows all about computers that you refer all your friend’s tech & computer questions to? Well it’s like that (and that guys is me).
- Original Research – The author lists examples of Danny Sullivan, a man who compared how well different webmail services were able to de-spam his inbox. All he did was sign up for several free email accounts and compare them over a month on how well each service was able to prevent spam from reaching his inbox. This was original research on his part that was free and only took a little bit of time, but was very popular on the internet.
- Get a blog and establish yourself as an authority. “There is no excuse for a company these days to NOT have a blog”. More likely, you’ll use your blog to establish yourself, your brand, or what you’re about.
- Run a service that people find useful (or create a product) and give it away for free to the community. You can do the work once, and make lots of people happy through giving them something useful to them for free.
- Site Architecture – This is a basic one, but make sure your site is easy to crawl for search engines, and easy to use for visitors.
- Make Videos- Making videos can give people a lot of value, and all you have to do it talk- something we naturally do everyday! The idea is you make the video once, and when it’s posted it stays on our site and helps out people searching for that topic who come across your video for months, or years to come.
But don’t take my word for it. Watch the original 8 minute video below, straight from Google! They’ve GOT to be the authority right?
"Be Original" says Michael
