Get Your Business Seen Online

Every business that uses the internet wants to get found. That’s pretty obvious, right? But how to you go about getting found?

Search engine optimisation is obviously a big part of this, which is a subject I’ve talked about a lot on this blog. One aspect of that is building back links.

What’s a back link?

If you want people to find your website, you need lots of arrows pointing to it – these ‘arrows’ are back links. Take, for example, the paragraph above. As you can see there’s a link – search engine optimisation – that is an internal link as it points you to a previous blog post. However if I were to write about a freelance copywriter who would be able to boost your businesses visibility and sales by producing eye-catching sales writing that inspires customers to buy, that is a back link because it’s pointing to an external website.

How do you get back links?

Encouraging people to link to your website takes work. Generating high quality content is the key. If you are providing great information regularly, people will  want to link to you. Creating hints and tips in your chosen field will also help elevate you to expert status, and with that comes more links.  But there are ways you can also generate links yourself.

Blogging and article marketing are two very effective ways of building back links, especially the most sought after type – the keyword hypertext link. I showed you an example of that earlier by linking the words ‘freelance copywriter’. This just happens to be one of my key phrases. These are the most valuable links as they relate to your chosen keywords. You can generate a lot of links by submitting your website to directories, however they tend to just link by website name (e.g. Briar Copywriting) rather than by your keywords.

Going back to article marketing for a moment, when you post an article and insert a keyword hypertext link into your text, you are effectively funneling a bit of link juice to your website. That might sound a bit strange, but this is how it works. If you use an article site with a high Google Page Rank (e.g. ezinearticles) and they allow you to add hypertext keyword links which are follow links (as opposed to the no follow link), a little bit of page rank is also passed along the link. Therefore the more links like that, the higher your chances of increasing your own website’s page rank.

Another way of generating back links is by guest blogging and using social media and social networking sites. These are great because you can add your profile details to widen your ‘internet footprint’ therefore boosting your chances of being found online. Some sites even provide facilities to create your own micro-site which gives you even more exposure. Taking advantage of opportunities likes these and contributing to forums etc., will boost your exposure.

One giant step…

Generating back links is invaluable and you would do well to get into a routine to create blogs and articles that constantly generate links for you. Make sure the content is fantastic and keyword rich to encourage others to link to you.

But don’t forget about the other elements of SEO. Back links should just be one part of your SEO strategy. You must also consider your website’s structure and content.

All three elements are essential if you want your website to be found online. But you must remember that SEO is an ongoing process. You have to constantly review your keywords, constantly tweak and update your content to get the optimium amount of traffic and conversions and you must continually build back links.

Your competitors will be doing all of this, so if you stop you’ll gradually become invisible to online customers.