Basic Link Building Strategies for B2B Companies
Posted by Jeff Demers on Fri, Feb 05, 2010 @ 01:20 PM
Business owners and employees know that when choosing a 401K plan, a diversified portfolio is always a solid investment choice. The market is constantly changing. Financial advisers always encourage choosing a variety of financial instruments for safety and growth. With that same focus in mind, a B2B hi-tech or B2C bio-tech internet firm should apply the same principles, when developing their marketing internet strategies. With all the new technology and social-marketing alternatives on the Internet today, a smart marketer needs to explore each one and apply what works for them. What a great way for any B2B or B2B startup internet firm to delve in and create some substantial buzz, while increasing their website traffic!
Using Back Links as a Marketing Strategy
Back links are important to search engines. When a search engine, such as Google, sees the number and quality of sites that link back to yours, it sees that link as valuable. Google then gives it a higher ranking in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).
Creating Back Links
- Write articles and press releases for submission to sites within your market niche
- Leave relevant comments on blogs within your niche areas. See what your competitors are saying. Be creative. Leave some comments on their sites, as well. Comments can lead to large exposure, which in turn can lead to even more relevant visitors finding your site and linking to it.
- Post your website on a variety of website directories that are relevant to your space. Avoid low cost, general directories that have low (or no) editorial standard
- Join some industry forums placing your back link as your signature
- Write blogs submitting them to over 40 social bookmarks and social news sites. Again, the additional exposure created by syndicating your content can lead to more potential link partners finding your website.
- Create a YouTube video; share some valuable knowledge about your company and product, while including a back link to your website.
- Do not forget to put your name, company, and link at the end of everything you write.
Internet Strategy Never Replaces Quality Content.
Obtaining a good website ranking is so much more than just having a website, blog, and hundreds of back links. It means your site contains relevant and important information, worth sharing with others and linking to.
Having back links does not guarantee success. Google and Yahoo rank websites in several ways. Where your links are placed, and the quality of the sites they are from, can also determine the amount of SERPs, traffic, and ranking you will get. Links placed within content get a higher ranking. The search engines also look at the relevancy between both your site and the source site. Another key point to know is how many back links that source site contains. The more back links contained, the less relevant your link is. Therefore, it is advantageous for you to link back on sites with a minimal amount of back links.
The Honest Approach to Link Building
Honesty and integrity are always the best policy. Google started devaluing traded links in the Fall of 2007 and started penalizing directories that used dishonest means to raise their own PR so they could sell links.
"Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating. However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such."
Therefore, having well written, solid content is the best way to encourage anyone to link to your website.
How Many Back Links do I Need?
There are no correct answers to that question. Your market and competition will be the determining factors on the specific paths you need to take to stand out and get noticed. As we have previously stated, back links are just one part of your internet portfolio strategies. You will need to explore and experiment with many more avenues of marketing tactics as you create your own customized formula. Remember to employ the three "T's" - Test-Test-Test.
Marketing is a time consuming tedious process; but it does work. There are so many options, and paths to take, especially when you are a B2B hi-tech or B2B bio-tech start-up firm. Concentrate on first developing a solid and trustworthy web reputation. Web reputations are built very slowly, one post and blog at a time. Create good content; and stand behind your promises, product, and service. Cultivating your readers and membership into loyal clients is priceless and worth the investment of your time.
Further reading: "Discover your Links" by the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog