A Simple Way to Get a Few More Links!

What do most web site owners or webmasters want? Other than a fat checking account, they want links! Yes, they want LINKS. Lots of inbound links... The more links the better!

Sometimes it's easy to overlook the obvious and only think about the complex and complicated methods of linking strategies. I'm going to tell you about one often overlooked page you can put on your site to get a few extra links. A page that is easy to create and can help build those valuable inbound links. What is it? A page with instructions or suggestions on how to link to your site. Sound too simple to work? Don't assume everyone knows how to do these things, the fact is a lot of people don't.

There are several reasons why this helps build links. You may think if someone wants to link to you they'll just do it, right? Maybe not. By having a detailed instructions page it gives YOU the opportunity to suggest the text that's used in an inbound link - this is call "anchor text". In case you don't know, that text is important to your search engine rankings. Some people WILL use your suggestions, some won't, but some will and that will aid your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. There are a lot of sites that are operated by individuals with limited HTML skills. By providing the HTML code to copy and paste, you help and encourage these people to successfully link to your site. Every link counts. What if adding this page to your site only gets you a handful of links you otherwise would not have had? To me it's worth it. And you if get a even a few links from sites with a high page rank value it will really help your ranking.

Just having a link in your menu that says "Link to Me" will prompt a some people to link to you who may not have thought about it and that will get links you probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

I already had "How to Link to Me" information on the contact page of my one of my web sites, but I didn’t have a dedicated "How to Link to Me" page on my main blog until I wrote this article. In fact, most sites don't and the site owner never thinks of doing it.

A "How to Link to Me" page should include a variety of suggested text links, links with thumbnail images, and maybe even an ad or two. If you are suggesting links with images, give the well worn phrase "right-click to save images locally and then upload to your web server". One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming that everyone knows how to do the simple stuff... don't assume that everyone knows how to do these things, they don't. Also, make textareas to hold the suggested HTML so that the resulting page displays the actual HTML text and is easy for someone to copy and paste.

Here's to getting more inbound links and ranking at the top!