Don’t Neglect Traditional Link Building

Traditional link building sees the webmaster contact other webmasters in closely related niches, requesting a link. This could be in exchange for return link (most commonly known as a reciprocal link). Reciprocal links lost most of their value quite some time ago though, due to this practice. A one-way link is more powerful.

Getting the attention of a webmaster so that he is willing to put in the effort to add a one-way outgoing link to your website can be time-consuming. If he is in the know, he will also realize that linking outward from his site can cause a slight loss in his own rankings, as his link equity is spread out from his own site to yours. This is not to mention the fact that people who were happily browsing his products might end up clicking on the link to your website, and losing him business.

If you are offering something of value to his user-base, then you are much more likely to get that link you ask for. This could be in the form of information, such as a groundbreaking report, or an interesting way of displaying data within your niche. It could also be in the form of a discount on products or services if the customer clicks through from the linking website. For the linking website this becomes a less bitter pill to swallow, as his site can offer more to his customers.

Be aware that few webmasters are going to add a link to a competitor, even one which is not directly competing with his core business. This can sometimes be circumvented by setting up an affiliate scheme – advise prospective inbound linking sites that they will receive commission on the business that they send to you. The key to making this affiliate scheme work is simplicity and transparency. Make it extremely easy for the website to automatically earn profits from you, and they are much more likely to go for it. Similarly, make it easy for them to see how much traffic they are sending and how much money they are making.

Contacting webmasters in this traditional way may not be as fashionable or fun as say, running a social networking campaign, but it still arguably offers some of the best returns. Setting up a lucrative relationship with an authoritative website will take much longer to arrange than gaining 100 links from unrelated sites, but the rewards will be ten-fold.

About the author:

Claire Jarrett runs Marketing By Web, who are a PPC Company and also offer SEO Courses