There are two types of links – internal links and external links. Internal links are those on your website that link to other parts of your website. For example, on your home page you have links to other pages in your menu. External links are other people's websites that link to your website. Both are excellent indicators for search engines.
You can find out who is already linking to your website by typing the following in a search engine: Link:www.mydomain.com.au (Google and Bing) or Linkdomain:www.mydomain.com.au (Yahoo)
For example:
Once you have determined which websites are already linking to you, then you need work out a plan to increase links to your website. The following ideas will help:
- Ask businesses that are complimentary to yours to link to your website, and you do the same in return.
- Ask your Local Chamber of Commerce to link to you.
- Participate in social media like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to generate links back to your website.
- Comment on other people's blogs and in your comments and make sure you put your name and website link as your signature (like you do in email).
- Have you developed a patented product? Create a Wikipedia page for it and place links back to your site.
- Develop press releases and submit them to press release distribution sites like PRWeb.
- Have the ability on your website for readers to tag your content as interesting and share it with others. See the 'Share' button at the top of this page as an example.