1. Tedious
   

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2. Time-consuming
3. Necessary.

It’s because of that last one we all have to press on and continue to build links if we want to get noticed.

How Popular Are You?

In webspeak, “link popularity” is the number of websites that link to your website. If you want to know how popular your website is, you can go to www.linkpopularity.com and use their free tool to check out your popularity on Google, Bing and Yahoo. But be warned…your results may bring on high school flashbacks of that feeling of standing outside the popular crowd looking in. Still, it’s a great way to track your popularity as you build links.

Go for Quality Over Quantity

If your link popularity is dismally low, it is in your power to change your status. However, you won’t boost your popularity by linking to hundreds of unrelated sites. Search engines are smart enough to recognize quality links. A quality link would be defined as a link that has been around for a while, produces high quality web content, sees a lot of web traffic, etc.

Where to Start?

If you haven’t done any link building, a good place to start is within your own sphere on the web. You can link your website to your business Facebook page, LinkIn profile, a professional association of which you are a member, etc.

Once you’re connected to these sites, you might want to check out your competitors’ links. For example, if you run a natural foods business, you can type your competitors’ sites into the linkpopularity.com tool and see which sites link to them. In doing so, you’ll find websites with relevant content that are obviously willing to link to other relevant sites. Check out the sites to make sure they’re high quality links. Link up to their site and then send off a personalized email requesting a reciprocal link.

Other Good Link Building Strategies

1. Submit your website to free or paid directory sites specific to your industry. Make sure they’re high quality directories!

1. Offer to write a guest post (as an authority on a particular topic) on a relevant blog in return for a link back to your site. Not a writer? Hire someone to do it for you.

1. Participate in discussions on blogs and forums related to your industry.

1. Submit relevant link-building articles to online article directories.

1. Set up a Squidoo page. Publish useful information on your page and link it back to your site.

1. Leave a testimonial for a product or service you like on another site. You never know…it might bring some traffic from people who also like that product or service.

1. Put linkable content on your site (i.e. articles that are helpful, solve real problems and really give people the info they’re looking for). Linkable content is content that other sites would want to link to.

1. Create a blog. It’s a good place to put that linkable, useful content. Update it regularly. Request links to relevant blogs. Make valuable comments on relevant blogs.

1. Make use of sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, and Technorati. Don’t know how these sites work? Check out my upcoming articles on Del.icio.us, Digg, and Technorati.

Need a health writer to help you with all this link building writing? I can help. Contact me to discuss your writing needs.

Image courtesy of Renjith Krishnan

Climbing your way up the search engine rankings can seem like a daunting task when there are countless other websites in your industry vying for top rankings as well.

If you don’t have the funds to hire a reputable SEO company to help you, there are a few simple (and cheap) ways you can improve your search engine visibility on your own.

1. Provide Your Website Visitors with Useful Content

If you give your readers the information they’re looking for, they’ll likely be back to visit your site again. Web readers tend to be impatient readers, so your site should also be easy to navigate so people can find the information they need quickly. Welcome pages with music, videos or “Click to Enter” buttons are more annoying than welcoming because they’re a barrier (albeit a small one) between your reader and your website’s information.

2. Choose the Right Keyword Phrases

It’s best to start off with just one, maybe two, keyword phrases for your site. You’ll want to use these keywords throughout your site’s web pages, but not so often that your site could be flagged for “keyword stuffing”. Generally, the more specific your keyword phrase, the higher you’ll rank.

For example, when I chose the keyword phrase for my site, I chose “health writer” over other related terms because although “health writer” had fewer global monthly searches than related terms, it also had less competition, meaning that I have a better chance of ranking higher in the search engines with that term. Try to avoid high competition keyword phrases.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) is an excellent keyword tool that tells you the number of monthly searches for your keyword phrase, the competition for that keyword phrase and the breakdown by country of where those searches are coming from.

3. Good Keyword Placement

Your keyword phrases should be smattered throughout the text on your website, but they should be really prominent in your titles and meta descriptions.

4. Make External Links to Similar Sites

You can link externally to your own web pages (i.e. your business Facebook page) or to other sites in your industry. There are hundreds of ways to build links and link building remains a necessary evil for increasing your visibility on the web.

Check out my next post, “Link Building: How to Become More Popular” for some good tips on building links.