Links are important, you just can’t deny that. It is important for any business to get links from a variety of sources. Generally speaking, links account for as much as 80% of what determines a web site to be placed higher or lower in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Also, people come to me to do SEO. They generally know some things on how to improve a web site (internal SEO – search engine optimization), but they don’t realize just how important the process of getting links is important in this process.
Also, when a client comes to me, he expects me to do all the work about getting links – “You’re the expert, you should know how to get the links”.
Generally, I do. But, in my opinion the best place to start getting links is not that far away from a client’s business. One should not look very far away from the business to prospect the links. What I mean by that is that you can get links from the people you know, from the people you have a business with, from the people you have a partnership with.
Some possibilities of people you know that you can get links from:
- Some people you have a personal connection with – this may be formed of people you once had a starting relationship with (old colleagues, former friends, people you know lesser). This may go well into with care. You don’t want to say something which might jeopardize a friendship for the sake of the potential to get a link.
- Former colleagues, business partners, people you know.
- Present day people you have partnerships with – there are a lot of business-type relations you can have with a company or entity, you can work on this to get links.
- People you have a very close relationship with – some relatives, some good can get links from?
The best idea is to ask that person to write an article about your business or partnership. Having an article from a web site which links to you is one of the best methods of getting a good value from the direct visitors you have, good branding and a good SEO value.
So, let’s say you have a good relationship with a provider which constantly gives you materials for your business. Where you should you put the link?
- Sitewide links. This links are usually placed in the footer or sidebar, and any page contains them.
- Partners links (a dedicated page / place for links for partners). Another solution would be to put the links as a partner. Well, this link can be either in a dedicated page on the web site called Partners or something similar, or you can have a special space on your web site called partnerships, which lists the links sitewide. So, whatever page on the web site persons visits, that person will see the section partners, and your link.
- An article on that web site, describing your business. When you ask to someone for a link, you can get n articles (see above, it is one of the best places to have the link put).
In my opinion, the best solution is to get one or two articles, instead of sitewide links or partners. Reasons? Sitewide links tend to be removed once you don’t have a partnership with that person, an old written article on the web site is much likely to be kept. Placing links in “partners” is usually a bad sign for Google. Finally, an article related to your business will help a lot on the relevancy of the link.