Are you looking to attract new customers? Here’s 20 link building strategies that are designed to attract customers to your website.
- Internal Linking and on-page SEO – I’ve started with this one, because it’s the one that you can control, yet some many people fail to do. You can easily control the anchor text of your links and where they appear on your pages. You can also steer the content of your pages and posts to other articles and pages on your site. Just make sure that you use keywords and phrases that are market defining, but make sure you avoid the use of “exact match” anchor text as this can be treated as a spam signal by Google. Opt for long-tail anchor text phrases that include the market defining keywords.
- Ask your friends, relatives, or just about everyone you know who has a website or blog to link to you.
- Forge partnerships and create reciprocal links that feature in emails. These are great links to have because you don’t need to rely on Google to bring customers to your door
- Identify websites where your potential customers may hang out. Link to the website, add a touch of flattery and then tell them the link exists by dropping them an email or tweet. People love to hear when they have been mentioned and they are more likely to return the link.
- Niche specific directories. While most directories are worthless, there is still some gains to be made with niche directories. You can flush out the niche directories for your market by using a Google search query along the lines of “market defining keyword intitle:directory” – simply replace marketing defining keyword with the appropriate keyword for your industry. Another little tip, only focus on the those in the top 5 search results and certainly don’t bother with page 2 or beyond. Google ranks in order of trust…those with the most, top of the pile. Make sure you are extremely selective and remember you are placing a link on the directory to attract customers, not to boost your website rankings. Ask yourself, is the directory going to bring customers to your door? If the answer is no, then avoid the link.
- Create a bullet point list. People absolutely love lists because for the most they are easy to digest. If you’re in the energy market – how about a list containing the top 100 energy saving tips (given the recent hike in the cost of fossil fuels in the UK).
- Create how to’s and tutorials. People find such content very helpful and useful. Build content on your website that helps people use and understand your products or services. Here is an example of an article we wrote to help people to understand when to use the rel=”no-follow” tag
- Create useful lists of market related resources. For example, let’s say you sell plants online. A simple list of the top 50 gardening related websites or 50 top gardening experts to follow on Google+ would be most welcomed by your customers. This would attract links, likes and shares.
- Get involved in twitter conversations. First you should retweet them a couple of times, then respond to their tweets. Once you’ve got the ball rolling you can then ask them for their email address, so you can communicate at greater length. Once you have established a relationship, then you can start asking for links.
- Be the one to publish news as it happens. Attend industry related events, conferences etc and publish news and images on the go.
- Start a petition. There’s a lot to be gained by being so passionate about something close to your cause that you are willing to start a petition. Make sure the petition is hosted on your own site, so you attract the visitors, links, likes and shares. But, most importantly, make sure you or another person informs your local newspaper and tv outlet of the petition, so you get extra coverage. (Imagine you sell bicycles, there would not be a better time given all the deaths on the road lately, to launch a petition to have bike lanes installed in all the major cities across the UK).
- Create useful online tools that other businesses in your industry would want to use. The SEO world is glittered with free useful tools, why is this? Because it attracts links, likes and shares from those in the SEO industry. This is exactly what you need to do in your own industry.
- Be the first to review a new product. Lets say you sell power tools – you want to be the first online store to review the product – this will grab the attention of others and will created links.
- Submit your discount codes and vouchers to voucher websites and blogs – especially those that relate to your industry.
- Submit answers that solve individual problems. Look for Q&A websites, twitter and industry related forums where participants are in need of help and support. Solve the answer and place it on your own website.
- Start a meetup on meetup.com – Choose a topic that you have the answer to. For example, imagine you run a health club. Start a meetup on helping people keep fit and advice on how to choose healthy food.
- Reciprocal links. There is a lot to be said about sourcing reciprocal links from trustworthy sources and sites that occupy top Google rankings (you target these, not because of their rankings, but because of the level of traffic they get). Imagine you are a wedding photographer, surely its common sense that you should seek to exchange links with cake makers, jewellers etc. Stop thinking about Google rankings and start thinking about linking for customers.
- Images – the use of images for backlinks is not as common as you may think. If you are a manufacturer of products and goods then you are in a prime position to offer images to your resellers; just make it easy for others to copy and paste your images by providing them the HTML code.
- Create competitions and contests that require individuals to write about your site and mention it – especially from facebook, twitter and Google+ where you can be exposed to their followers, friends and circles.
- Many industries have yet to harness the power of Youtube and Google+. Because Google is serving video and Google+ posts into its search engine results pages you’d be foolish not to leverage the possible traffic both digital formats could bring to your website. Write posts and create videos that provide answers to questions.
