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 When people think of getting traffic
to their site, one of the most common thoughts is to
submit their URLs to the search engine directories. This
method can often take months and months before your site
will actually show up in the listings, and can be very
time consuming. It is becoming outdated as a method of
traffic generation. While it is still important to do
this, one thing gaining in popularity these days is
building and exchanging links with other websites, and
making sure your link is on other people's sites, pointing
back to your site. It is a free and extremely powerful way
of advertising!
How do we generate links to our site? One of the ways is
through participating in forums. When we do this, we
normally include a signature at the bottom of all our
posts with a link to our website. When visitors of the
forum read a quality post, which offers some valuable
information, tips, or help, they are more inclined to
click on the link at the bottom of the post, giving you
more traffic and potential sales.
Another way to spread your links around the internet is to
write and submit articles, with your author information at
the bottom, including a link to your site. When a
publisher reads your article and gets something of value
out of it, they may publish your article on their site or
in their newsletter, or even just click on your author
link, taking them to your site right away. Again, this is
free advertising. Normally your articles and links, once
published, will stay on the internet indefinitely,
providing you with free advertising for life. A blog would
work in the same way, in that you make a post with your
author information and URL at the bottom of the post. You
can also make comments on other people's posts, leaving
your link behind on other people's websites.
Reciprocal linking is one popular linking method. This
means that you exchange links with other websites. If you
link to their site, they will link to your site - a
win-win situation for both. This can be done manually, or
with special linking software like Link Machine that
automates the process and saves you time. You want to link
to sites that have similar content to yours. Linking to
your competitors can be a good thing because their website
content is similar to yours. However, you risk possibly
losing a sale to one of them if they click on that link
instead of yours.
One-way linking where you don't have to exchange links,
but can just leave yours, is perhaps the better way to go.
Posting in forums, writing and submitting articles, and
blogs are good ways to get one-way links pointing back to
your site. You can also submit your URL to various web
directories for free, or a small fee, either manually or
with special software like Link Directory Submitter to
automate and speed up the process. There are millions of
web directory sites, so the number of links you can submit
pointing back to your site are practically infinite.
One last thing: Don't forget to be consistent with every
action you take, i.e. Contribute to forums, write articles
and blogs, and submit your links regularly! Consistency in
the end is what produces results!
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