Let’s kick off by better understanding why you need links to point to your site, and what are the benefits for SEO. After all, when we were younger we were taught that pointing was rude, so what has changed?
Why do we build Links? The two main reasons are:
- Search Engine Rankings
Inbound links are very important to your website. Every inbound link associated with your website counts as a ‘vote’ in the eyes of the Search Engines. Why a vote? An inbound link is effectively a vote of confidence. Search Engines assume that if another website is willing to link to yours you must have something worthwhile on there. In other words, the more quality, one-way inbound links you have pointing to your website, the more popular your site will be with the Engines.
- Traffic
Links also guide browsers in finding the information they are searching for. Links can in fact be seen as the doorways to every single page on the World Wide Web. This means that you can generate higher amounts of user traffic to your site by having links all over the Web pointing to your site. More traffic means more potential customers and that means, (potentially) a higher conversion rate! If these links come from sites related to yours, the users that arrive at your site would have been searching for the product or service that you provide and thus will be much more likely to actually move to action. This is why your product or service has to be the best or has to be presented in the best possible way. You don’t want the potential client to be unable to find the information they are looking for and move on!
Social Media is probably one of the most popular Link Building strategies out there, and for good reason.
These days it is possible to find breaking news on Social Bookmarking sites like Digg even before the top news agencies had had a chance to publish anything (in fact many of these news sites get their breaking news from the Social Media sites).
Link Building with the help of Social Media sites is a great strategy if you know how to use it properly. Merely leaving your links on all the bookmarking sites you can find most definitely does not guarantee you anything in the way of traffic or “Link Juice”. Here is how you SHOULD be doing it:
- First and foremost, building a good reputation in the Social Media realm is a must! Top Social Media users are known throughout the platform they are using, and therefore they have an army of followers that vote for their additions.
- Don’t bookmark for the sake of a link. Your work will count for nothing. Here, like everywhere else on the web, content is king. Contributing useful and interesting information to the Network will ensure that users click on your link and you will build your reputation.
- Choosing a “catchy” title and using market-related keywords in that title could mean the difference to your bookmark moving up in the ranks or being buried under all the thousands of daily bookmarked sites.
- Choosing the correct category for your bookmark is also very important. Religious Social Media users will bury your link if they feel that you are only interested in leaving your link for self gain. In other words, don’t bookmark your “Cute Kittens” site in the World News Category.
Web2.0 can be classified as sites on the web where the user can contribute to the information found on that site. A good example would be Social Media sites, like Reddit.
There are others, like the well-known and much-used Wiki’s. Wikipedia is a vast source of user generated knowledge and information. AboutUs.org is another Wiki that is mainly used to advertise your service or product on a different platform than your official site. Do a good job and make sure that you don’t duplicate content from your existing site, and the good folks at AboutUs.org can actually remove the No Follow attribute from your created page. Link Juice!!!!!!
Web 3.0 – the Semantic web is on the rise.
Web3.0 uses the semantics of language to be able to deduce what it is that you, as a consumer, like. This means it analyses your likes and dislikes in order to send relevant content your way. Awesome, right? Twine.com is a fantastic Web 3.0 platform. This is a Web 3.0 Social Media site consumers can use to create and bookmark their own “Twines” of information.
Social Media is here to stay. It is already evolving with the use of the Semantic Web. We should keep evolving and use the technology that is out there. Who knows, in the near future the entire Internet will probably be personalised to your suit your specific requirements!
