How to increase your inbound links

Gaining inbound links is one of the easiest ways to improve your search engine rankings. But how do you get inbound links, and how many do you need?

For those that don't even know what they are and why they're important, they are just links on other websites that point to your website. And they're important because the search engines use these inbound links to judge the importance, or reputation, of your website. A website with more inbound links is seen as more important, and so ranked higher, than a website with fewer inbound links.

There are lots of easy ways to get inbound links because there are a lot of free links directories on the internet. Just submit your website to some of these, and once your link is approved, a link is added to the directories.

But these are very low quality links. Higher quality links are worth more.

If you can submit your website to any directories that are specific to your industry, they are slightly better. But it's even better to get links from other websites (non-directories) that are about your industry.

Industry bodies or accrediting organisations may link to your website if you are a member. These will be quite high value links.

If you use any online forums, most forums allow you to place a link to your website in your signature. That way you will receive a link on every message that you post. But don't just spam a load of forums just for the links. They'll see straight through that and just delete your account and your posts.

Other than that, just find other websites on the same sort of subject and send an email off to them suggesting that they link to you. The worst that can happen is that they say no.

If anybody asks you to link back to their website in return, that's fine, but it reduces the effectiveness of your inbound link. It's much better if the link is only one way.

How many inbound links should you get? Well how long is a piece of string? If you have just one link, that's better than nothing, but not really any good. You should submit your website to at least 100 directories. There's millions of them, just do a search and you'll find loads. Yes, it's going to take quite a while, but without it, your rankings will struggle.

Not all of the directories will approve your links, so submit to as many as you can.

Try to go for quality AND quantity by getting lots of directory links and lots of links from related websites.

OpenGlobal have a link building program as part of our Standard Management Package to take care of all this for you. Contact us if you would like us to help you will you inbound link building and search engine optimisation strategy.