Link Popularity

You really need inbound links to your site from sites that the engines consider as high quality sites. Since Google introduced the BigDaddy and Jagger updates you seem to need these more than ever. Where should you begin? Well, I can say that if you're a member of a recognised industry trade association or similar then you will benefit from having a link to them on your site and you'll further benefit from their site having a link to you. You'll benefit from the last one a lot more, in fact.

It really is essential to include a links campaign in your marketing endeavours, these days more so than ever. Best way is to get links from specialist sites and directories; after all, they want to link to you anyway, so why not help them by letting them know of your url?

Method is as follows. Call up your search engine of choice and in the search field enter the following;

"your main keyword phrase" + "add url" . Then start the search. This will bring up any number of directories related to your subject and should present you with the page to add your url to. Further directories may be found by the following variants;

These will bring up all manner of related sites. Some will demand a reciprocal link. If you think they're useful to your visitors, then by all means give them one. I can be wary though of directories who charge for the privilege of inclusion but, if you think it's worth it, then by all means go ahead. Some of these, being human-edited, can be very good value.

You could go through these links below. Use them as a shortcut to sites you'd find eventually anyway through the above processes. Remember, keep notes. I maintain a database myself.

Speciality Search Directories

Google's Directory of Custom Search Engines

More of the same

The DMOZ category for speciality directories

The How To Get Incoming Links Site

The Silencer's Directory List

Best-Web-Directories.com

The You-You List

The ISEDN List

The Strongest Links List

Directory Archives

The Internet Search Engine Database

The Pheedster List

The Quanta List

These are the kind of links you should be specifically seeking, sites that are related by locality or by theme.

It's a sad thing to say, but we have to bear in mind that we live in litigious times. It might be as well to have, tucked away in some discreet but available corner, brief mention that while you are happy for your visitors' convenience to link to So-and-So's site linking to them does not constitute endorsement of their products or their service and neither are you to be held liable for any consequence arising from their use etc.
I would that this were not the case.
But there you are.

A number of people in your industry will have blogs. Most blogs allow comment and some of them will allow Page Rank to pass through those comments. I wouldn't worry about that aspect of it, if you can comment with authority then interested parties should follow the links to your site which will bring you traffic anyway - no need to rank higher if you already have good traffic.

Getting links from articles you've written and distributed can get you some excellent links. I had a PR7 (for those of you impressed by these things) from Chantelle, Celebrity, RocknRoll and The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. At the moment you can write complete rubbish and get accepted in too many places but my feeling is that the whole articles scene is going to tighten up soon and a lot of the smaller sites will go out of business. If you can write yourself, all well and good. If not, then you may want to consider hiring somebody who can. I have a page written myself on the subject of articles for seo and you may link to it here.

Many industries have forums. Find a forum, join it, fill in your profile (you'll see - this is an online form where you store your details) making sure you mention your website details and you configure your sig so that it links back to your site. This can be a little more complicated than it sounds, the code used is normally a variant on the standard html and it can be fiddly to get right. I copy and paste the example, if there is one, and then alter it as necessary. Then observe who is saying what and comment where you can. Do this often and once again do it because you know what you're talking about and can assist, that way again you'll get traffic to your site quite apart from any link benefits that may accrue.

Here's an example link for you;
http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/41216-seo-software-big-scam.html

[URL=http://www.kruse.co.uk/]SEO UK[/URL]

[URL="http://www.example-keywords.com/"]Example Keywords[/URL]

If you do that around a few example keyword-related forums you'll get some useful back links and very likely some traffic too. Setting up your sig correctly can be tricky when you aren't familiar with the procedure, but now you know how to do it!

You're going to need to keep a list of who you've applied to for links. I use an Access database for this but you Johnny-come-latelys have it easy (at least where directories are concerned) as there's now 123Promotion's custom-built Directory Submission Manager which is useful for all kind of things. This is linkbait par excellence - some of you might learn a lesson here.

Get your site in shape. See it validates, or near-as-dammit-validates, make sure each page has an individual title and description tag, and that it's navigable by the engines. Don't even think about the next step until you've made sure of those essentials. Then submit the site to the Yahoo Directory and Best of The Web. At the moment, Business.com looks good too.

Then you need to get links from authority sites. The tool I use to find these is SEO Elite and it does a whole lot more besides. It's an essential tool for the DIY SEO, I know Brad Callan is a marketer but he's put his skills to very good use here and come up with a product that I couldn't replace. Go get one;SEO Elite! To cut short the process described above to find sites using "Keyword add url" etc. I use the online Solo-SEO tool. Then there's the Real Link Finder. I use this to find blogs related to the terms I'm searching for. I've used quite a few similar programs and frankly, this is the best I've come across. Lastly, I'll use Link Diagnosis on the competitor sites, see if there's anything I've missed or if I get new linking ideas from seeing the same information but presented in a different manner. Also, you want to try Touchgraph to see who links to the people who link to the people who link to (ad infinitum) your competition. Very good for getting secondary and tertiary links or avenues of exploration that, otherwise, you'd quite possibly never think of.