Headspace Halifax Website Design

How to get awesome links

This post is heavily based off of the vlog from SEO Moz; Whiteboard Friday - How to Get Awesome Links

At one time, SEO for most businesses meant stuffing a few keywords inside meta tags. Things have certainly changed. Among many other techniques to boost ranking, the biggest being useful, keyword rich content, link building stands as the most effective way to drive traffic to your site. The basic concept is this; your site is being linked to by another site (AKA an inbound link) - not only does this help your site because user’s are directly visiting your site from this inbound link, but Google will increase your actual search ranking depending on the quality of the link. Which leads us to…

What makes a good link?

Three main factors make a good link, in order of importance.

1) Motivation - sometimes, the best things in life are free. In this case, that cliche certainly applies. When a site links to yours because they genuinely like your content and want to promote it, this makes for a better link than one that is simply exchanged or paid for.

2) Source metrics - The higher the linking site ranks, the better it is for you. For instance, if apple.com links to you, this is more valuable than a link from your grandmother’s blog (Like any grandmother has a blog).

3) Anchor text and URL - The words that is linked actually matter. If the linking site includes keywords in their link, this will boost your ranking for said keyword. For example, if someone links to Headspace, I would probably want awesome web design company as a link instead of click here.

How do I get awesome links

Good, natural content. This is the simplest way to do it, yet the hardest to pull off. If your site has great content, the inbound links will follow.

Content Licensing If your content or application has a creative commons license, then others have to link to you when they use your content on their sites. Example, a photo from a photo blog or a widget from a development company is used in a blog, it’s only right that the blogger links to the source - you. Kind of like how I’m linking to SEO Moz for using their content in this post.

Link bait and Viral content Similar to #1 - if your website or post is so interesting, funny, amazing, or controversial—the links will follow. Viral content gets quickly spread across sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon etc. The challenge is making fascinating content.

Partnerships - This is obvious. If you have a sister company, another branch, or a strategic partner, exchanging links is both good and valuable.

Social Media and Good Directories - Although most social media profiles (Linked In, Facebook etc.) have little link juice, they are still worth posting. Also, good directories like Yellow Pages, Kijiji, or another qualitative list is good (not link farms).

There are more points in the SEO Moz post, but These were the points I found most valuable. Does anyone else have other methods of obtaining awesome links?