Inbound links bring you traffic and boost your ranking!
- One time I saw a blog that saying,
- If you want to increase traffic... get links!
- If you want to get high page rank ... get links!!
Link, link, links!!!
Though that blog was written for general web sites owner, when it comes to blogging, nothing changes!
Strictly speaking, the amount of traffic coming from external links may be small compared to that of one coming from major search engines. But,it is highly targeted traffic and moreover it does increase your page rank. Thus, more traffic can be expected from search engines.
One may raise a question. "How many inbound links do I need?"
Sorry, it's a wrong question. Quality of links matters,having many inbound links is not bad, though. If you have external inbound links from absolutely not related to your blog theme, the links are just junk. And if they are coming from the site which have lower page rank than your blog site, it doesn't help you much. That said; quality matters.
One way to get inbound link is link exchange. You link to other sites and ask the owner of that site to link back to you. I don't want to discourage you from doing link exchange, however, it is difficult and time consuming job. Whenever possible, try to get inbound links by doing link exchange. But you may put more effort to do other things yet more effective ones.
First, why getting inbound links by link exchange is difficult?
Most of web masters and bloggers know that they have to get inbound links from
- the web sites or blog sites that have similar themes as theirs
- those have higher page rank than theirs
The first one generally doesn't produce problem. But there seems to be logical problem when the second one is concerned. If everybody wants to get inbound links from higher ranked site, who else is willing to link back to the lower ranked sites. Not many, I guess. This makes doing link exchange less effective.
A warning: under any circumstances, don't be involved in link farm or Free For All(FFA) links. Once they were good tips to get high rank, however, nowadays search engine, especially Google will ban you if you're involved in those activity. They are not legitimated link exchange.
Having said that, here are 4 tips to get inbound links other than link exchange.
- Submit your blog and/or RSS feed to blog search engine and directories
It does bring you small amount of traffic. More importantly you will get inbound links from authentified web sites, blog search engines and directories. There are more than 100 of them and you can find the links at RSSTop55 - Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites. It says top 55 but if you read on more than 100 submission lists you'll find. I don't think you have to submit all of them, but if you can it's OK. Submitting to 100 sites is not pleasant job. Start from first 10 or 20 sites, and if you think you need more, do it another day. But don't fool yourself by buying auto submission program or service because most of blog search engines don't allow auto submission and most of them pinging is enough.
A note: it lists Yahoo Directory and Open Directory at the first two spot but postpone submitting there unless you have more than 20 content pages.
- Leave a comment to other blogger
Everybody seems to know this. :-) My 2 cent tip is that visit a blogger who has higher rank than you and leave a comment with your blog link (remember you have to use your blog name or keywords as a link title). Some bloggers allow to leave a link, some are not. Of courses go to the bloggers who allow. Don't forget to leave your blog link with your keyword title.
- Similarly leave a post on some forums
Of course to the forums that are active and highly ranked.
- Write a free article and submit it to the article directories
This is a powerful tip yet not many blogger are doing. By doing this you'll get quality inbound links and a decent amount of traffic. This tip even make many other sites work for you. The secrete is that you provide useful information with your resource box that promote your blog. You allow other blogger or web master to publish your article on their web sites or blog with the condition of placing your resource box at the end of your article. Just pick up some of your blog, refurnish it and submit to the article directories. You can submit your article at "Ezine Articles", "Article City", "Go Article", "Article Factory", etc.
There you have 4 tips about how to get quality inbound link to your blog and this concludes the traffic to blog:how to boost traffic to your blog series.
To sum up,
- find niche keywords that are related to your blog theme and topics
- write a good informative blog using the keywords
- mind some search engine optimizations
- and more importantly get quality inbound links
That's it. Happy blogging and wish you all the best.
About the Author
Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of Blog Sites and running Hom Based Affiliate Business web site.
