4 Ways to Build Links to Your Website

4 Ways to Build Links to Your Website

Building inbound links to your website is vitally important if you want to have a better search engine ranking. Links count as votes for credibility and Google uses those votes to determine PageRank. PageRank is one of the primary determining factors in deciding the order for search results. Therefore, the more quality links you have point to your website, the better the chance for a higher search performance.

On a very obvious level, the more links back to your website from other websites makes it easier for people to find your website anyway.

What are some ways to build links?

1. Write a Blog – Put information on your website that people are interested in. Take a position on a topic you know about and get a conversation started. Other bloggers and other websites will link to yours if the content is compelling enough. For more on this, read "Five Reasons a Funeral Home should Blog"

2. Link Exchange – You work with other businesses every day. Those businesses have websites too. Offer to put links on your website in exchange for theirs linking to yours. Contact the florists you do business with. Does your Chamber of Commerce have a listing of local businesses? Are there genealogy groups in the area the post local histories? Are you a member of any local clubs, like Rotary, with websites?

3. Social Networking Sites – Millions of people are online using MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networking sites. Your profile pages for many of these sites can be made public, and if so would count as a quality link pointing back to your website. As a business, you should already have a Facebook page and LinkedIn accounts for all your staff. Make sure you get the most benefit by filling them out completely and include a link to your website.

4. Directory Listings – Online directories are not as important as they used to be. However it is probably better to be listed as you never can tell who is still using them. Watch out for directories that cost you to be there or are password protected. If the directory is hidden behind a password wall, then Google will not see it. Therefore, it does not do any good in terms of link building if the search engines can not find the link. DMOZ.com is good and so is Zoominfo.com. State funeral director associations and the national associations are worth checking with too.

Building links to your website does not have to be hard but it is something you should think about. Develop a strategy, find your comfort level, and slowly start to grow from there. Over time, the results will speak for themselves.

Final word of caution though. Don't get suckered in to an offer to create thousands of links for a low cost. This is likely a scam and could result in your website being "delisted" from the search engines. Remember the old adage, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.