Adding a blog to your internet marketing arsenal is an excellent way to improve search engine placement. Blogging provides you with another opportunity to attract search engine spiders that will direct traffic to your blog. By adding keyword-dense links to your blog that point directly to your website, you channel more traffic to your website via direct linking while at the same time creating the kind of focused links that search engines gobble up, further improving the search engine ranking of your website. It’s a power play that provides dual benefits.
Links come in all flavors. Some will “taste” better to search engines than others. Outbound links are links you provide in your blog that point to other sites. Often they link to a source site for a news item or quote. Their purpose is to provide helpful additional information to your readers. Inbound links (also called back links) originate from other sites and point to your blog. Google search spiders appear to have an appetite for Inbound links, and many people believe that the more inbound links you have, the better your Google ranking.
Creating outbound links isn’t hard because you’re doing the linking. Getting other sites to link back to your site is harder because you have to rely on the generosity of others. Probably the fastest way to attract inbound links is by submitting your blog to web directories. Directories are like an internet phone book that lists websites and blogs. By listing your site on a directory, an inbound link from the directory to your site is created. But the real value lies in alerting other bloggers and web writers to your existence. Bloggers use directories as a source when looking for information on a topic they are writing about.
You can use directories to find likely sites for reciprocal linking which can be used to create a wealth of inbound links to your blog. In reciprocal linking, you agree to link to another party’s blog and they link back to yours. While this sounds like a win-win scenario, it can be a dud if you choose reciprocal linking sites unwisely.
Before implementing a reciprocal link, check out the quality of the blog. It should offer plenty of fresh content that supports or augments the content in your own blog. The more relevant a reciprocal link, the more good it does you in search engine placement. One way to judge a potential reciprocal site is by its page rank. A good ranking indicates the link will provide positive value to your site.
