Getting Your Website Cited (Or How To Get Links To Get Found)

With the birth of search engine optimization, an industry was born.  Businesses worldwide became focused on "getting found" in the search engines.  As we previously discussed, getting found meant "getting cited" with links from other reputable and relevant websites.

Just like with citations in academia, the best way to get links from other webmasters is to write-well and publicize your writing.  This is the most natural way of obtaining links.

It's important to keep in mind however, that writing for the web has some significant differences from writing offline.  In order to maximize your "link potential" it is important to implement strategies that make your writing "link worthy".  

This is generally known as "link-baiting".  In my view, link-baiting is merely giving other webmasters some form of incentive for linking to your site.  Sure, the desire of other webmasters to share well-written content constitutes a form of link-baiting, it's really the most passive.

Some of the more well-known effective forms of link-baiting include top-ten lists, product or service reviews, interviews of other webmasters, and running a contest.  For more ideas, simply search "link baiting" in Google.

More direct than "writing great content" and "link-baiting" is direct link solicitation.  Using direct link solicitation techniques is a little more tricky and requires some attention and thought to the method used to solicit links.

At the top of the solicitation heap is post-exchanging.  Exchanging blog posts or articles with other websites provides a win-win situation.  First, to the person supplying the post, it exposes their writing to a new audience and generates visits and links back to the author's website.  For the person hosting the post, it provides fresh user generated content for the site's audience.  This can offer a new perspective, point of view, or voice.

From a search engine's perspective, these types of links can appear just as natural as the editorial "citation" links described above.  That makes them very valuable.

The next solicitation-style links are direct requests for links.  Direct requests may be made for one-way links (they link to you) or reciprocal links (they link to you and you link to them).

The effectiveness and efficiency of a direct link solicitation strategy can vary greatly.  If your strategy comes across as too spammy, empty, or irrelevant, it won't be well-received.

Further, if you direct solicit from irrelevant off-topic websites, search engines may discount these links, or penalize you for having a large quantity of such links.

Finally, you can buy links.  Buying links requires even more strategy as purchased links my get your site banned from the search engines altogether.