But it doesn’t matter how valuable your content is. It
doesn’t matter if you created the greatest thing since
sliced bread and you’re selling it exclusively from your
website. No one will find you if you don’t reach out. And
how do you reach out? With links.

In the brick and mortar world, a retail business depends on
demand and location. If you put a store selling something
that somebody wants in a high traffic location, you will be
successful. And sometimes it doesn’t matter if your price is
a little bit higher than everyone else’s. Look at
convenience stores that set their prices twice as high as
any grocery store. So they make a profit? You bet they do.

Now if we use this model for an website, location can be
compared to your search engine rankings. The higher you rank
for your chosen keywords, the more people come to your
store. If you provide something that your visitors want,
valuable content, they may buy something or they may just
remember your site and be back for more.

Getting people to link to your site is one way to increase
your ranking with the search engines. But a lot of people go
about this the wrong way. By posting to free for all links
pages, spamming blog comments, or worse. I had a blog that
got about 10 comments a day from people that were just
trying to get a link to their site. The site was a family
photo blog. It was an easy target, but do you think that
anyone looking at a picture of my family wanted to click on
the Cialis website link in the comments?

Well, search engines don’t think so either. Links like this
are being downgraded in many search engines, including
Google. It’s a good thing. And this brings us back to
valuable content.

Valuable content will convince people to link to you. Did
you know that most blogging software can put a “blog this”
link on Internet Explorer’s toolbar? This button puts a link
to your site right from their blog. And once your site gets
into the blogosphere, there’s no telling where is will stop.
Maybe with top rankings for keywords you never optimized
for, but that fit your site perfectly.

Did you know that there are site rating groups like
stumbleupon.com that can send your site to thousands of
people within a week? If people like your content they will
pass it on to other users. You could have 500 people linking
to you by the end of the week.

What about the “Link to Us” page? I know. I thought it was
“old school” too. Until I tried it. It works. Just give your
visitors the code they need to copy and paste to their site.
Make it easier for them and they’ll link to you.

Linking membership sites are great also, especially when you
get hundreds of requests for link exchanges because of the
caliber of your content.

Yes, things are changing with search engines. But if you
have been providing the type of content that people look
for, you have nothing to worry about.

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About the author:
http://www.stephanmiller.com