In today’s flooded internet market, it is very difficult to stand out and get noticed. Organic search results are some of the hardest areas to establish your name and standing in. This is why we hear so much about 1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO); so the search engines know what you specialize in and 2) building credible links to our websites from other more established web properties; to establish credibility as a quality source of content.
How is a new web entrepreneur to go about doing this when there is so much misguided information offered on the internet and an overwhelming number of marketers or even scammers trying to find ways to grab every little penny you have when you are first trying to get started. They seem more than willing to risk your business with Gray or Dark Hat methods and advise. But be forewarned that people selling advanced ranking are likely to get you an initial boost followed by a delisting from search engines.
Business Directories are great places to start.
LinkedIn.com – You can build a company profile, as well as individual profiles for key employees and founders. Select “Other” when setting your first web site link to create custom anchor text. Also take advantage of the two additional links available, but no custom anchor text is allowed.
Digg – Digg is great for traffic generation, and while not the bigtime it once was, it is still a large community. Plus, you can submit articles you want to promote, and links to those articles are followed by search engines.
Foursquare – Even if you’re not a check-in fool, you should set up Foursquare profiles, as the link you associate with your account is followed.
Reddit – An article submission site in the Digg line. Very active with highly engaged users. The links you submit will not deal with the no – follow attribute.
Squidoo – Create as many Squidoo “lenses” as you desire, about related business topics. A lens typically consists of a blog post type article, with links to other recommended sources.
StumbleUpon – An article discovery site that’s exceedingly busy and popular. Drives significant views all around the Web. Submitted links are followed.
Yelp – Even if you don’t know a mountain oyster from a sea oyster, create a profile on Yelp. The link in your profile is followed. Links in comments, however, are no-follow.
listings.local.yahoo.com – This local business portal allows you to create a profile for your business and is devoid of the no – follow attribute. Use target keywords in the profile and description fields, and anchor text if possible.
One of the more practical methods is to leverage free directory Article Publishing services. Really the big key is finding those that provide DoFollow enabled so that once the article is indexed, the back-links are included and your sites reputation is increased.
Sadly, many sites do not provided DoFollow links. Especially in regard to comments and other generally posted information. If you are not aware of the websites policies and they use NoFollow, the ‘no-follow’ breaks the connection you are trying to make between one website and the next, defeating the purpose of a link from the perspective of Google optimization (people can of course still click the link and visit your site directly).
Having an opportunity to publish an article about your company and include some back-links to your business that will be indexed by the various search engine companies is a great low cost method to getting your business noticed and improving your search ranking by the number of back-links found.