Once, it was said, all roads led to Rome, and there was a reason why that was important. It meant Rome had the strongest trade routes whilst cementing the Roman reputation as the most important city on the planet.

Links work in exactly the same way. Apart from the obvious traffic flow from providing as many ‘roads’ leading to your website as possible, the search engines calculate these links in determining the reputation and ranking of your website in their search results.

Depending on the relevance and popularity of your website subject, a strategy designed to acquire lots of quality inbound links can potentially transform the traffic flow of your website from a trickle to hundreds of visitors a day very quickly.

“Veni, Vidi, Vici” – We Came, We Saw, We… Linked?”

Any business understands the importance of strong word-of-mouth recommendations in building reputation and customers. Links are valued in much the same way.

An inbound link to your site (also known as a backlink) suggests to the reader that the website is worthy of a visit. This is why search engines take so much notice of them. Search engines also avoid counting purchased links, as these do not offer the same unbiased recommendation. It is also why reciprocal links (where two sites link to each other by friendly arrangement) don’t carry nearly as much weight as a one way link, despite the practice being extremely common.

If a hundred websites make an independent decision to link to you, that’s one hundred webmasters that made a conscious effort to suggest to their readers that your website is worthy of their attention. Not only do these links therefore drive qualified and interested traffic to your website, they improve your reputation and therefore your search engine ranking, which in turn can drive still more traffic. More traffic may mean more people also choose to link to you as they discover the wonders of your website. And the cycle continues, snowballing in size until you can’t cope with the sheer amount of traffic.

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

There are many proven strategies to boost link acquisition. By adopting some or all into your online routine, you will start to see a steady increase in backlinks over time. By using an analytics service, such as Google Analytics or Netregistry’s Web Analytics, you can monitor the growth in your backlinks and see where they originate and how much traffic each link produces. This allows you to refine your strategy to concentrate on the areas of most success.

The secret to encouraging links is to produce great content on your website. This is what has become known as ‘linkbait’, quality content of strong relevance and eye-catching titles that people can’t help but link to.

There are many linkbait opportunities available to most websites. Here are just a few.

1. Providing Additional Information

One of the biggest uses of the internet is to find answers to questions. Every day, Google services millions of requests for “Why are clouds fluffy?”, “How do I find a decent mortgage?” and any other possible query that occurs to people in their daily lives. If there are common questions within your field of interest, by providing detailed answers within your website, you can attract links as a trusted source for that information.

Netregistry recently implemented this strategy by adding new webpages on a variety of information topics of interest to internet users. What is a domain name? and How to register a domain name were two of a number of pages created specifically to service this question and answer market. By adding quality articles on popular and relevant information topics provides other sites with an obvious page to link to when they want to provide an easy reference for their readers. This can build your website reputation as a trusted authority within your field, and this feeds the snowballing effect.

This strategy works best if there isn’t already an obvious monopoly on the same information. For example, if a major website already carries the same information in greater detail, readers will choose to link to them over you. But if you find a way to approach the subject from a different direction – maybe by focussing on particular scenarios or issues pertinent to your target demographic – your information service gains greater value and becomes more link worthy to the people that matter most to you.

2. News Pages

There are a huge number of online art galleries, each competing for internet customers to view their works and invest in some attractive pieces for their collections. But imagine how much more traffic an art gallery website would receive if it also hosted a news section detailing recent events within the art world. Everything from government art grants to exhibition openings and controversial reviews would attract a myriad of art-hungry readers and links. More traffic to the site exposes more people to the brand and to the products.

Now, even if you don’t have an art gallery, imagine how the same approach could provide your website with a wealth of quality backlinks.

The more topical the news, the more likely other websites within your field will link to it. Like the previous strategy, a news centre transforms your online presence from being solely a provider of products and services to also being a provider of quality information of interest to your key market.

If you are able to include a fully featured news centre in your website, you can also allow readers to subscribe or syndicate your material through RSS feeds. Indicated by a square orange symbol on webpages, RSS feeds can spread your content far and wide whilst encouraging all readers to continually return to the source – your page.

3. Blogs as Link-Building Machines

Blogs are the kings of link-building and not because people want to know what you had for lunch. The idea of the blog as a whimsical online fad has disappeared as business blogging has become the cornerstone of online networking.

With so many avenues available for publicising blog posts and syndicating them where they will have the most impact, each new post can quickly gain interested traffic and links. Blogs are also given preferential treatment by search engines within their results, in recognition of their topical and informative nature, providing another quick boost of traffic.

Blogs love to reference other blogs, entering into a larger discussion on topics and themes raised. As such blogs don’t work independently but as part of the larger ‘blogosphere’, swapping opinions, commenting on each other and linking back and forth. The most successful blogs are focused on a specific topic – usually with a particular industry bias – with the prime motivation of developing a strong dialogue with the customer base. This works in a number of ways. There are the obvious benefits of creating content that your customers may find interesting, but primarily blogs rely on the building of links.

The best blogs pepper their copy with text links to relevant sites, most often other related blogs, to support information or provide effective references. By doing so, they provide unbiased recommendations that are the core of a good link strategy. By using your blog to actively link to others, eventually you will see the favour returned. By signalling your membership of the online blogosphere by referencing other blogs and linking frequently, the amount of ‘link love’, as bloggers call it, which you will receive in return will astound you.

This is all dependent on the quality of your content. No one will link to a poor article or uninteresting blog. But by developing a strong writing habit and regularly publishing and syndicating interesting, informative and unique content, you will find your backlinks multiply enormously.

Blogging requires a lot of attention, not only in writing regular effective posts, but also in networking with other bloggers to produce the level of camaraderie that results in strong links and active ‘buzz’.

“Friends, Bloggers, Google! Lend Me Your Links!”

It is important to maintain a regular schedule with fresh content, as your visitors may stop returning if they are unsure when there may be something new for them to read. Also, Google rewards new content with a higher than usual ranking in the search results, to reflect its fresh and topical nature. By taking advantage of this Google feature, you can attract a lot more traffic to your website quickly with a sustained and regular policy of adding fresh, informative content structured around your target demographics.

Of course, not everyone has the time to produce regular content of the quality necessary to gain positive results. Netregistry developed their copywriting service to help small businesses produce quality, professionally written content easily and on a regular schedule. They have been specifically designed to boost your link acquisition strategy and Google ranking without the stress of trying to remember your old grammar lessons from school. Netregistry’s copywriting services could transform your website from a static and unchanging online brochure into a dynamic, search engine friendly link magnet!

All roads may lead to Rome but do all the best links lead to your website?

About the Author

Jonathan Crossfield is the Online Editor and Copywriter for Netregistry's Marketing Department and a regular contributor to Nett Magazine. If you would like Jonathan to write vibrant, fresh content for your website or marketing campaigns, enquire about Netregistry's Copywriting services.

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