What are inbound links?
Inbound Links, also referred to as back links or one way links, are an offshoot of Off Page Optimization, which in turn is an important segment of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a technique adopted to rank your websites top among the search engine results for a given keyword or a key phrase, thereby driving more customers to your website. The success of a website depends on the web visitor count, and here comes the importance of inbound links. Acknowledged as a website’s lifeblood, an inbound link is simply a hyperlink that points to your web page from some other web pages. When a potential customer clicks on this particular link, he will be redirected to your website, which in turn is beneficial to enhance website traffic. The more inbound links your website has the more often the search engine robots will visit your website as well as more it will appear in search engine results. Eventually, the outcome is that it improves your link popularity and boosts your website ranking among the results of top search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo.
Mostly, inbound links fall under three categories: Good Links, Bad Links, and Useless links. As the name suggests, good inbound links can bring you huge benefits in the form of enhanced link popularity, better page rank, improved website traffic, better product awareness, and enormous sale and profit. When comes to bad inbound links, they are disliked by top search engines and may adversely affect your websites. As a result, search engines may sometimes blacklist or penalize your website. Included in the useless links are those that neither bring good nor bad to your website, and hence may not harm or benefit your website. In short, inbound link is regarded as a pathway to the success; however, it could help you achieve best results only if they are obtained from useful and good sources.
How do I get more of them?
As mentioned earlier, even though these links are indispensable for the success of your website, they could fetch you best results only if they are derived from highly ranked, best quality websites with good content. Discussed below are some effective tips to get quality inbound links.
Creation of a Link Page on your website
through which you can place hyperlinks to all websites that link to you.
Article Writing
Making fresh, useful contents in the form of articles, news blurbs, press releases, blogs, and web design templates, and posting them in various article directories, which in turn is a great way to get maximum number of clicks for your website link.
Finding Suitable Link Partners
This can be done easily. All you have to do is to browse through the web to find websites selling similar products or services or sharing similar information. Then invite these websites to add your website link in their relevant web pages.
Downloading Google Tool
This helps for the process of finding suitable link exchangers, as it displays the Page Rank and tells you the status of a particular website, i.e., whether it is relevant as well as ranked well and whether it would be beneficial for your website if it is linked with this page.
Contacting webmasters of websites that sell related product or share a common topic
However, there are certain guidelines for this such as:
1. Prior to contacting them, place a link to them in your website
2. A letter explaining them regarding the nature of your business website and the benefit that could be derived through the link exchange
3. Provide them with your link page’s URL and exact HTML code
Joining forums and message boards
This is a great way to get your message out and are also regarded as an effective method to get quality inbound links.
Organizing chat rooms
This is yet another great method in order to get quality inbound links and to deliver enhanced traffic.
Above mentioned are just few among many of the numerous options available to get quality inbound links. Options also include listing your website in local business listing site, joining link exchange centers, and the usage of correct link text.
Who should I look for when trying to get Inbound Links to improve SEO?
Getting quality inbound link is an art rather than a scientific technique. In order to get quality inbound links, one of the best ways is to get in touch with websites with high page rank and by buying hyperlinks from these sites. There are many relevant websites that render inbound links for a minimal cost for a month or sometimes a year. As discussed earlier, it would be a great option to contact other websites that sell related products and services. Likewise, if you possess a good, pertinent content, then sometimes other related websites may approach you for reciprocal link exchange, i.e., if you place a link to their website then they will place a hyperlink to your website from their web page. This in turn is highly beneficial, especially, if you have links from high page rank sites with good traffic, as people visiting these sites will also visit your website. Above all, it is an excellent way to approach sources like different domains, different classes of IP, and authority websites, to get quality inbound links for your website.
Biggest mistake in SEO: A non-existent inbound link campaign
Link campaigns are one of the most prominent ways to improve the website visibility through back links, and inbound link campaign is focused on getting links for your website from other high page rank websites. Included in inbound link campaign options are articles syndication, press release, niche directories submission, and paid blog posts. However, there are certain scams involved in inbound link campaign, among which perhaps the most important is non-existent link campaign, which is alternatively known as invisible, hidden, or fake text campaign. Since smart search engines such as Google can easily trace out fake links, sometimes your site can be banned from the search engines due to a non-existent inbound link campaign.
In fact, all efforts aimed at the creation of inbound link must be an organic process. In other words, it is better to have a gradual increase in the number of links that point to your website rather than a large number of inbound links within a short span of time, as search engines may sometimes raise warning flags on your website.
