When you are trying to promote your business blog or your website there are several things that you can do in order to increase the search engine optimisation or SEO. You can add content to your blog regularly and research and aim for keyword phrases. You can also pay attention to writing good headlines, ensuring that your chosen keywords are used.
Keywords and content are only one of the ways in which Google assesses what a website is all about. The search engine also looks for backlinks from external websites that are similar in content in order to verify that the information is useful and in context.
There are different ways to build backlinks to your website. It should be noted that over time, organic or natural backlinks should occur where other people find your website and link to it because of the great content. If you have a new website and want to bring it to the attention of other people then there are other ways to go about it.
Comments on Forums and Blogs
Visiting other forums and blogs and commenting on other people’s posts is a time-honoured way to get links to your website. Choose popular blogs with plenty of comments and check that they are relevant to your website. When you comment, leave a link to your previous post. Make sure that you add value to the blog when you comment. Blog owners will delete blog comments if they are obviously spam. Getting involved in forums is a great way to meet people in a similar field to yourself. You can either join a general business forum or a more specialised forum for your line of work. You can build a profile and get involved in the discussions. Not all forums allow links in the signatures of free members, but it is worth a free membership to see if you want to get further involved.
Flickr
I find that using photos from Flickr is also a way to bring links in. I often use photos from Flickr that have been labelled for reuse. There is a previous blog post about this. I always leave a comment on the photo owner’s page to let them know that I have used the photo and where they can view it. I have not had anyone ask me to take them down, but I have had traffic from Flickr.
Internal Links
Building internal links to other articles also helps convince Google that the website is real. When you write a post, you can include links to other articles that you have written, if they relate to the material. This enables you to highlight old posts which disappear from view as the website gets older and also can save you writing the same information over and over again.
Submitting Articles
Finally people use article submission websites to help to build back links. These websites have been knocked back recently in the Google algorithm change but they will come back because they are such a useful tool. There will be further information on them in another post.
These are some of the ways in which search engines categorise your website. Getting it right will help to drive traffic to your website from outside which can help to bring it up the pages of a search. Enabling potential customers to find your website can only have a beneficial effect on your business.
Photo Credit: Found on Creative Commons by thegoldguys
Related articles
- Do You Spam? (thecreativewriter.co.uk)
- 3 Fatal Mistakes to Avoid when Optimizing for Search Engines (samtilston.com)
- Boost Your Site With Do-Follow Backlinks (bonuspay.wordpress.com)
