Low Cost Web Site Promotion

Link Popularity Methods

If you are a small business, seek out business directories to submit to, especially those directly related to your business.

Looking in Yahoo! and ODP categories for business directories can be very helpful in getting a start on your search for links.

For link popularity, searching in Google is a quick way to find suitable websites to request links from or submit to.

Search for specialty search engines. If your business is in the medical field, search for medical search engines.

When looking for link partners, select sites that reflect your website's topic or subject. Links from sites that are not related to your site are not weighted as heavily by the search engines in deciding how to rank your site.

Visit your competition's websites. See how they are ranking in the search engines and find out which keywords they are found under.

Link popularity is a very time-consuming activity, be prepared to spend a minimum of 10-20 hours in order to start building your link popularity. This may be a daunting enough task you might want to consider working with a search engine marketing professional.

Helpful Tools

It is always a good idea to keep in mind that many tools are not "exact" and can vary due to the search engine algorithms changing (which can be often). I like to think of it as an "approximation" of the information I am seeking.

The Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) shows you the approximate link popularity of other websites (note the green bar that says "PageRank" after downloading the tool), as well as giving you choices such as checking backlinks (who is linking to the webpage), similar pages, a cached snapshot of the page and more when you right-click on the web page. Visit your competition's webpage, then use the toolbar to view who is linking to them.

The PageRank and backlink information is very helpful in regards to researching your competition. The backlinks you find via the toolbar may show you some quality websites to submit links to. Seek out websites with PageRank 4 and up to get the most out of your submitted or reciprocal link. Hovering your mouse over the Google Toolbar tells you the page rank of the page you are visiting.

To learn about writing an email request for a reciprocal link and other linking strategies, visit Eric Ward's website (http://www.ericward.com/articles/index.html).

The Overture suggestion tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion) is a free way to check how popular your keyword phrases are in comparison to the monthly results of Overture. This will not give you a complete picture since Overture is used on many but not all search engines. It will help you decide which keyword phrases are the best choice, as well as as variations on your keyword phrases.

MarketLeap (http://www.marketleap.com/) measures your link popularity, and that of three of your competitors. The report is free and gives you a benchmark showing where your popularity lies online vs your competitors.

Lastly, if you want to "do it yourself", the top places I've found to research and learn from are Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com) and Webmaster World (http://www.webmasterworld.com). Search Engine Watch and Webmaster World's sister site, Search Engine World (http://www.searchengineworld.com) both have free newsletters full of information to help you promote your website.

Daria Goetsch is the founder and search engine marketing consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a search engine promotion company serving small businesses.