Finding Relevant Links:

As we\’ve discussed in the past, when it comes to effective SEO, only relevant links matter. Fortunately, it\’s a lot easier than you might think to do this. First, think about what is your major keyword or what is the most desired word or phrase you want your site to be searched? Once you have this in mind, simply type this keyword, without any quotes, at Google.com (and Yahoo.com when you try to rank high in Yahoo as well) and see the results. All these sites are your potential link partners.

Try to explore each site in the results and think of a way to gain the desired link from every site. These sites are actually what Google thinks as relevant to your major term – so eventually if you get links even from some part of these resources\’ total amount (Google will show you only first 1,000 results anyway) you can rest assured your site will rank high in the end of the day.

Now try this tool and type in your major keyword:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

See those all additional keywords? You can go ahead and do the same thing you did with your major term. Here are those many more link opportunities for you. Omit those, you have already worked with and get links from others. Track everything in a special database.

What about your competition? Look who is linking to your major competitors and try to get links from them as well. Use the link:competitorsitename.com operator in Google.com and ilinkdomain:competitorsitename.com in Yahoo.com. If all those sites linked to your competitors, they might link to you as well. Grab those links too.

One more approach to gain links without too much hassle is to search for your own site name: YourSiteName.com. Look through the results and find sites where you could write them and ask them to put a permanent link where they mention your site. For their convenience, just send them the code of the link and tell them where exactly it should be placed. There can be many pages where your site is mentioned. Make them your inbound links. This is a very simple but quite effective method.

Getting Relevant Links:

The hard part is asking for links from all these sites. It takes quite some time and lots of creativity to achieve results. Many sites would be your competitors as they try to rank high for the same terms, so it would be especially hard to get links from this group of websites. The outcome is quite rewarding though.

Here is the most effective link-building strategy:

Create a very good link request letter: always use a name of the person and describe his/her site in your own words. Make this letter very short and offer something in exchange for the permanent link that they wouldn\’t refuse. Hire a full-time person or a team of people with good Internet skills and have them send out these emails all day long. You can even outsource this work offshore to save money and time, but make sure you trust them, as you don\’t want to damage the reputation of your site.

It is important to make sure your links are always different: with unique anchor texts. There are many other factors you need to take into consideration when you get links to your site. Read my blog article about what the inbound links should be like.

In my next entry we will talk about other ways to get links. Until then,

Shavkat Karimov
Director, Online Marketing
Every problem comes with a solution