Linking Makes the Web Go 'Round

Strategies for getting the all-important reciprocal link

So you've just had a website built - and it's fantastic. It looks great, it's got lots of information about your product and who you are. Overall, it is truly a fantastic piece of information that you're proud of. Now you want people to find you, and you look to search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, but just aren't sure how to get there.

There was a time when all you had to do was go to the home page of a search engine and plug in your information, and voila, your site was listed. Those were the days when the internet comprised of 1/1,000th the total number of websites that exist today. Nowadays, if you want to be referenced by a search engine, you need to be found organically - that is, your site needs to be found when a search engine sees a link to your site from another website that they already have in their index.

So, now you have to start finding websites that will set up links to your site. The most common way to do this is through reciprocal linking (you link to me, I link to you). To increase the possibility of other website saying yes to this, it should be a logical link. Link to your suppliers. Link to any chambers of commerce that you belong to. Link to information related to your product that your website doesn't go in to. These are only a few examples, and there are certainly more out there.

One note: Try to avoid getting your link on any site with an illogical linking system - ie. a page that has 1,000 links to random websites. These pages are seen by Google as spam and will be punished accordingly. If a link to your site exists on a site that is not remotely related, it's going to potentially cause some ranking problems.

Although Google's exact formula for judging sites and ranking them is a secret, linking is the key because a link is basically a vote for your site saying 'this site is a useful resource.' If you'd like more information about marketing your site, just give us a call at (559) 683-4030 and we'll help get you off the ground!