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Why B2B Marketers Need Link Love

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describe the imageAs Valentine's Day approaches you'll probably be hearing a lot of jokes about link love.

Are you a jilted link lover?

Does link love hurt?

Link love, love me do?

Ha. Ha. If you're a marketer or a small business owner, you should enjoy these, but also take them seriously. Inbound links are critical to your business.

In the rush to try new techniques using Twitter, Facebook or other social media tools, marketers often forget about links.

Here's exactly why they are so important:

(1) Your business needs to get found. If you want to general leads and sales online, you have to focus on getting found by your customers. You can spend lots of money to go out and find the right people via traditional channels -- cold calling, print advertising or trade shows -- but it's far more efficient to do things that help your customers find you.

(2) Search engines are the place to get found. You customers are using search engines like Google to find products and services. If you want to get found, you have to rank highly in search engines.

(3) Links get you found in search engines. The single most important factor in your search engine ranking is the number of sites that link to your site. Not surprisingly, these links -- inbound links -- are also very hard to get.

If you don't quite understand why links are so important, think of search engines as a hiring manager. If you're a job candidate, a hiring manager will interview you and check your resume, the same way a search engine will check a page's keywords and title.

But the hiring manager doesn't stop there. They want to make sure all the information on the resume is correct, and they want an impartial third-party opinion on your potential, so they check references. A search engine does the same thing by checking links. For search engines, links from big, trusted sites are a signal of quality.

Quality inbound links, just like recommendations, are hard to get, but critical to your success.

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Photo: drp


Posted by Rick Burnes on Sun, Feb 08, 2009 @ 07:29 AM

COMMENTS

Great info to keep in mind. And yes, it can be difficult to get in-bound links. But it's well worth the time. Also make sure you have lots of good, fresh and original content on your site.

posted on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 9:50 AM by John Sternal


Good Post. Also keep in mind that it matters what sites these links are coming from. Links from big, trusted sites are good, but not optimal if their content is completely unrelated to yours. Aim to get links from sites operating in the same category/niche than your own. That not only gives you visitors who are more likely to buy from you but also higher rankings in search engines.

posted on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 10:45 AM by Denny


Nice share, but you can get many inbound link so easily if you make a post regularly and do a lot of good share.

posted on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 11:09 AM by Ricky C


Other than size of the site of the outbound link, is there any way search engines determine some links are better than others?

posted on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 1:52 PM by Kathy


Kathy, good question! Reputation of the linking site is really important, as is the keywords the link comes from. For example, if you're trying to rank for the keyword "software", you want your site to be linked to from that word. Links from keywords tell the search engines what the destination site is about.

posted on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 1:58 PM by Rick Burnes


wondering if/when/can google will start looking at traffic coming from twitter and make that part of their search algorithm? 
 

posted on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 6:33 PM by scott miller


thanks your articles !

posted on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 8:02 PM by Touch screen monitor


Really good post, it would be nice to have all traffic being counted. It is also true that quality links are hard to get. 
Easy Internet Business

posted on Monday, February 09, 2009 at 7:26 AM by Tamar


Yes that's right quality link building is so important but you did not say something new.

posted on Monday, February 09, 2009 at 7:40 AM by Carpet cleaning sydney


I'm a new business online, everything about internet marketing seems hard to me at this point, only e-mailed. 
You all are so helpful,and it's so obvious that everyone is excited and wants to share! 
Thank you, you did a real good job explaining the importance of links,I actually get it. 
We make this a win win for both of us! Help me help you.

posted on Monday, February 09, 2009 at 8:22 PM by The MarriageManual


I agree that links play a big part and most people tend to ignore them since they take time to build. But to truly succeed in SEO you need them. And you need to focus on the anchor text in those links (anchor text meaning the actual name of the link). If you can strategically place keywords in the link that relate to the keywords on the linked to page, all the better according to Google. Here's a helpful post on using anchor text. Anchor Text, Google and SEO

posted on Monday, February 09, 2009 at 8:51 PM by John


Great article!  
 
Thanks for sharing everyone. 
Best, 
Coretta Jackson, MBA 
 

posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 12:24 PM by Businessethos.com


Great article - this is one of the things we get asked a lot when doing SEO work for clients. We can't stress enough the need for good quality linking. Like others have said, it takes time, but it's worth the effort in the long run.

posted on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 11:25 AM by Victoria Walmsley


Thanks for a great article that reinforces the need for quality inbound links. I'm a new business online as well and trying to learn as much as I can about marketing and SEO to get a good presence established. I'm really appreciating the good information and comments from everyone. Thanks! 
 
Sandra

posted on Friday, April 03, 2009 at 12:29 PM by Sandra


Thank you for sharing!

posted on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 8:00 AM by François


I have just come across your blog and wanted to say thank you for this post it was very helpful as I am trying to learn as much as I can about link building and all it in tails and this has shown me a lot more that I can put into practice. Look forward to coming back for some more information I have booked marked this page for further reference.

posted on Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 4:20 AM by Janet | Web Design


Thanks for sharing. There is a lot of useful information in tis article.

posted on Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 1:41 AM by Justin


Comments have been closed for this article.