Executive Summary: Linkbuilding and SEO for the Internet Marketing Neophyte

Links to your website are very important for Internet marketing and getting ranked higher in search engines for keywords related to your business.

Benefits of links to your website:
1) The right links can drive traffic to your site which can convert into leads.
2) Links help search engines find all of the content on your site to index that content.
3) The number and quality of links to your site help determine your Page Rank (basically a measure of how important Google thinks your website is) and your Page Rank helps determine your rank for many search terms.

Tips on how to get links:

1) Submit your site to web directories. Focus on the directories with the best brand and traffic. We have found the Yahoo! Directory and Business.com (both require an annual fee) to be effective, and also try to give the free open directory a shot. You can also try other, smaller and free or lower cost directories, but avoid any that seem really small or just don't look valuable - remember that the quality of the site linking to you matters. A couple ideas are: www.joeant.com, www.worldhot.com, and www.splut.com.

2) Communicate with others in your industry. Search around and find people who have useful sites related to your industry. Don't start your conversation with "will you link to my website?", but engage them in a business and intellectual conversation about something they recently wrote. Once you have established a relationship with them, then send them something you have published on your site and ask for their opinion. You'll be surprised how many will link to your site.

3) Create compelling tools and content. We have never promoted Website Grader very much. But because it is a really useful tool that people like, lots of people link to it. In fact, in under 3 months, we already had 800 links, and over 20,000 URLs had been graded on the website.