If you're a local business and currently marketing on the Internet you should be very excited. Your customers are turning to the Internet to find businesses like yours. It is the next wave of the Internet, or more like a Tsunami.
On the other hand, if you are sitting on the sidelines, you should be very concerned. For those businesses that do not adapt their marketing strategies, they will suffer grave consequences.
The way customer's search for local businesses is changing...
74% of U.S. households use the Internet as a source when shopping locally.
20% of all searches among this population are local.
45% of local searches had a buying intent.
Within a year there has been a 13% decrease in yellow pages usage.
Local marketing on the web is on a par with newspapers as a local shopping resource and should soon supersede newspapers.
• Local site promotion
While optimizing the site is important, you can also get noticed outside your website:
Instead of trying to define in absolutes what a quality link is I prefer to think about some of the factors that would be included in an ideal link. Most links back to your pages will not have every one of these factors, but by understanding what to look for you can better decide which links might hold more value than others and when it's ok to go after a link that may seem to go against common wisdom.
In no particular order I might look for the following:
1. Links from related or topical sites - This site includes the topics of web design and search engine optimization. When I look for links I would prefer them to come from sites or pages on similar topics. I would prefer a mention and a link in an article about web design or seo than I would a link in an article about mountain biking trails in Colorado.
2. Links from trusted sites - Trust has taken on an increased role in search algorithms. Much as with everything else in seo, links have been manipulated to artificially increase the perception of a site's importance. TrustRank (PDF) is one idea in the battle against spam. Links from .edu and .gov domains may be seen as more trustworthy than a link from other TLDs. A link from CNN will carry more trust with it that a link from John's Blog of Rumors. A link from a trusted site will bring more value than a link from an untrusted site.
3. One way inbound links (IBLs) - Speaking of trust. When two web pages exchange links do they really think highly of each other or are they exchanging links to raise the count of their backlinks? Search engines likely place more value on a link that is not reciprocated. Matt Cutts provides the official Google stance in his Indexing Timeline post. It's perfectly fine to exchange links with other sites. Regardless of how a search engine views the link if it brings targeted traffic then it's a link you want, but if given the choice I'd rather not recirpocate most links.
4. Links from authority sites - We all have friends with opinions and we all have friends who seem to know a little more about a particular subject than some of our other friends. You'd sooner ask your more knowledgeable friend when you have a question in their area of expertise. That friend is an authority on the subject. Websites too can be authorities. Search Engine Watch has long been considered an authority on the world of search. I'd rather have a link from most any page on the Search Engine Watch site than I would from the home page of a site brand new to the field. When your expert friend makes a recommendation you tend to listen more. Same thing for a website. When an authority site makes a recommendation a search engine will usually listen more than if lesser known and respected sites in the same industry had made the recommendation.
5. Links that can be crawled - Some links can't or won't be crawled by search engine spiders. Spiders are tripped up by JavaScript so a link embedded in JavaScript isn't worth the effort in getting. Similarly for a link embedded in a Flash application. In both cases a search engine might not even know the link exists. Many blogs are adding rel="nofollow" to links within comments. The nofollow is meant to tell search spiders that the site in question is not editorially approving the link. The site is saying this link isn't a vote for the web page on the other end of the link. Some search engines may still count these links, but they should be considered less valuable than if the nofollow wasn't there.
6. Links with relevant anchor text - If you need to be convinced of the power of anchor text have a look at Google's results for the search click here. A page from Adobe is likely the top result. That same page doesn't include the text 'click here' anywhere on the page. What it does have is many other web pages linking to it with the anchor text 'click here'. Ideally you'd like to get some keywords in the anchor text of the links pointing to your pages. You won't be able to do this always, but you can sometimes. You always can in your internal links. It's also part of what makes article writing a popular tactic for link building since you can control the anchor text within the article.
7. Links that can send direct traffic - Sometimes a link isn't about search engines at all. Sometimes a link can carry little weight in a search algorithm, yet it can send a great deal of targeted traffic to your web page. That link embedded in JavaScript may mean nothing to search spiders, but if a lot of people click it and go on to make a purchase would you really care what the spider thinks?
8. Links to deep pages - Not all links should point to your home. They should point to the most targeted page for the given anchor text. It would make no sense for me to use 'seo' as anchor text in a link and point it to my design portfolio page. Your home page will probably get more links than any other page no matter what you do. It's the easiest page of your site for most to link to and many directories will only link to it. When you have the opportunity try to link to deeper pages within your site.
The list above is hardly exhaustive, but it's some of what I look for in links back to my pages. You shouldn't expect to find every factor above in every link, but you can use the list to decide which of two links might be more preferable. If you're thinking about exchanging links with another site at least do your best to make sure that other site is related to your site and carries some trust or authority. If a site won't let you link to a deep page on your site see if you can write the anchor text for the link. If getting a link means getting no quality factors with it you may not want to spend the time getting that link.
Quality Is More Difficult To Get Than Quantity
One additional consideration is that quality usually takes more work than it's counterpart. If a link is very easy to get it probably isn't very high in quality. The DMOZ gets a lot of flack about its directory, but the reason being included there is coveted by so many is because it's difficult to get a listing. The difficulty of getting in helps make the link higher in quality than a directory that accepts every site that submits.
Links in forum signatures are relatively easy to get. You sign up for the forum add your link and create some posts. You can build a rather large quantity of links through signatures, but given the ease in getting them they are probably not considered high quality by search engines.
Quantity is easy to replicate. Quality is not easy to replicate. We can all submit our sites to a seemingly endless supply of directories. So can our competition. If there's a link that's very difficult for you to get then it will likely be difficult for your competition to get as well. If you can work hard enough to get that link you're a step ahead of the competition that hasn't done that same work.
Articles have long been part of a link building strategy. Many see submitting articles to a site like Ezine Articles as a great way to build links. You submit an article which is related to the page or pages you link to and use relevant anchor text in those links. As people download the article and add it to their site you might build a quantity of links quickly.
Many articles submitted to article directories aren't the best articles in the world. They typically don't have to be. A better strategy for article submission would be to write a well researched and well written article and submit it to an authority site. It will be more work to write that article, but having those links on one trusted authority site will prove to be more valuable than having those same links on dozens of less trusted sites. It will also be much harder to replicate.
Summary
Quality can't always be measured in absolutes and most of the time links to your web pages won't include every possible quality factor you would look for. Knowing some of the factors that go into a quality link though, can help you create a better overall link building strategy and help you determine which links are more desirable. Quality factors can also help you see which links aren't worth spending the time to get.
When thinking about quality links try to think of your ideal link and why it's an ideal links. Think about the factors that make your ideal link ideal and think about the factors a search engine algorithm might consider important in a link. The more of those factors you can get in a link the more quality that link should have. Also look for links that are difficult to get. They will require more work and take more time to get, but they will be worth far more than hundreds of low quality links and they will be hard for your competition to duplicate.
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Here are some ideas of what you can write about:
PR Story Starters:
How To Get Just a Little PR so you Get a Lot.
Use the following questions to help you brainstorm for potential PR topics. One of the surest ways to get more media coverage is to get some media coverage. Start small, but be consistent. It is a good practice to attempt to get some form of coverage every month. The more successful you are in terms of sheer volume of coverage, the easier it is to get full-length feature coverage. Is that Oprah on the phone!
• Have there been any personnel changes, promotions or additions in your firm?
• Have you taken on a new partner?
• Are you planning to expand your operations?
• Have you landed a significant new project or customer?
• Are you conducting educational seminars?
• Have employees completed industry apprenticeship or certification?
• Are you planning to speak at a professional organization's meeting?
• Have you, or anyone on your staff, received an award in your industry?
• Has a trade association cited you for excellence?
• Have you, or any of your staff, been elected to serve on the board of directors for another company or volunteer organization?
• Has your company sponsored a charitable fundraising event in the community?
• Are you doing anything that is a new trend in your industry?
• Are you mentoring other businesses owners or students?
• Does your business have a high number of women or minorities in management positions?
• Have you supported one or more of your employees through an unusual crisis?
• Do you offer any unusual employee benefits or incentives?
• Have you solved a problem in your industry?
Is your marketing unique?
• Have you started a new department or business?
• Have you significantly expanded your current services?
• Have you moved to new or larger offices or substantially renovated your offices?
• Have you become a new dealer for a name brand product?
• Has your company been in business for 5, 10, 15, 25 or 50 years?
• Have you discovered new ways to use technology in your business?
• Have you discovered new ways to market your products or services?
• Have you increased your sales since last year? Is that unusual for your industry in today's economy?
• What's the income trend in your industry? Are you following the trend or breaking out of the mold?
• Do you have a strong opinion on a local situation or community problem? Can you offer a solution? For example, a construction company might devise a way to organize left-over construction job site materials to benefit an organization that repairs homes for low-income residents.
• The Story Beyond the Story
If possible, you should always try to plan stories that may create other stories. In other words, look at your story idea as a series of news releases.
Email your story to Pat Morgan editor@KC-News.com Be sure to include applicable photos.
Benefits:
(1) Your link popularity will improve because you will be getting backlinks and traffic from multiple sites.
(2) You will get traffic from your link in your author bio if your articles are good and are read.
(3) You build name recognition and expert status in your chosen field.
(4) Your website will get spidered on a regular basis and you'll benefit because any new pages you build will get indexed quite fast plus any new changes you made to your existing pages will reflect in the index quite fast too.
(5) Promoting your new website this way is profitable because once it has a strong foundation in the search engines, it will be easy for you to build future new websites and get them crawled and indexed. The answer is simply by giving your future new websites a link on your initial new website.
(6) Your search engine rankings will get better.
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If you refer a customer to InfoKwik, you'll receive $50 as a referral reward. Email me or call if you have a referral. Pat Morgan Email - 816-415-0776.
•New InfoKwik Newsletter Archive
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I've also added a search engine, so you can find subjects of interest more easily.
•New online Keyword and Pay-per-click word research finder for your use: The Free Overture (Yahoo!) and Google Keyword Suggestion Tool can be found here. I've left the suggested Google AdWord books from last week below for your convenience.
Free Web Directories, where you can submit your web sites. This will help your search engine ranking.
I invite your feed-back and please let me know what you would like to see added. Email me
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