Link Types
Generally there are two types of links that you should consider in your linking strategy; unsolicited, where people link to you without any coercion or prompting and requested links. While these are the ones that you ultimately should aim for as they require no input or work from you, these will appear gradually as your site gains more popularity and the work that you put in to obtain solicited links pays dividends.
A solicited incoming link is one you requested , one that you generally had to do something to acquire it. Developing a solid linking strategy from day one will show immediate results, and it important that you plan this in to daily strategic activities.
To encourage the generation of links by third parties, you need to have systems and ideas in place to reach out to the market. To help the process along, it is useful to have a site that offers several useful features to its visitors. Features such as:
- Useful tools
By giving people useful tools to use you do two things:
1. You start to get talked about
2. You create an element of reciprocation with the receiver of the tool. Psychologically they feel indebted to you and feel that they should reciprocate the favour, by either becoming a customer of yours (lovely, thank you) or by telling others how useful your tool has been. - bEING dIFFERENT
Walk and talk a different path. Be controversial, be talked about and people will spread the buzz about you. And they spread the word by mentioning your site – which of course is a link! Luminaries such as Seth Godin and Mark Joyner have distinct takes on marketing and their content is avidly followed by many other internet marketers. - Valuable content
“Valuable” content is informative, easy to understand, informs rather than sells and has unique properties in that it is information that is not readily available internet-wide. While it is great to target a large audience, it is better to go for a specific niche audience. - Reputation, reputation, repetition
Size and reputation can help spread buzz. Gmail’s parent Google created fever-pitch excitement by offering a free product that blew the competition out of the water, and by restricting the service initially to invitation only create an elite product that people wanted – because they couldn’t easily acquire it. Build your reputation and capitalise on it! - Talk, Talk, Shout
Give people the opportunity to express themselves in your forums and pages on specific topics and your platform will benefit from the associated buzz. Hot topics can generate thousands of posts and your platform will become known as the place to express them. - JIT – just in time!
People will go to certain sources to hear the latest breaking news or information, and if you have access to hot news or horse’s mouth information, use this to add gravitas to your inbound links. And create a great deal of link traffic! - Niche is Nice
Relevant information aggregated into niche topics are a traffic magnet for all seekers of information. If you can provide an area that holds information from several sources on tight niche topics, why would visitors want to go anywhere else? And would they recommend your site and give it some link power? You bet! - Ask
Put up a resource box on your site asking people to link to you. Don’t be shy!
Of course sell the benefits of such and action and provide all the relevant information required for the links to be implemented.
