In the world of online marketing, getting people to link to your website is an important marketing strategy. Google changed the rules with this idea when they included in their search algorithm that every link to your website is a vote for your website.

Since then, website owners have wondered how to get more links to their website so they can create a higher PageRank and thus appear higher in search rankings.

There are numerous ways that you should (and shouldn’t) do this, but here are a few that I like:

1. Make sure your website contains useful tips and ideas so that people link to it (either on their site or through a social bookmarking site like Delicious or StumbleUpon). The key here is to create something of value so they will be motivated to return to your site over and over for more of the same helpful information. In my experience, top ten tips or strategies work really well. A downloadable tool might help here.

2. Be newsworthy in some way. If you report on some kind of news, people will link to you. The challenge here is finding the news and breaking big stories. But it is possible. Stick to your industry; don’t try to break the story of the next celebrity hook-up if your industry is the oil and gas industry. Instead, look through your contacts for connected people and see what they are saying and try to break stories in your own area of expertise.

3. Create badges, buttons, counters, or widgets that people can add to their site. Lots of sites do that. People post badges and buttons to show that they belong, they’ll post counters (like site visitor counters or subscriber counters, for example) to show their audience size, and they’ll include widgets in their website to increase functionality. But each of these is a link back to the creator and provider of the badge, button, counter, or widget. A great example can be found at http://www.socialmediabuttons.com/. You can embed buttons and badges from their site onto your site to promote your Twitter or Facebook profile… but in doing that, you’re linking back to http://www.socialmediabuttons.com/ and thus giving them a “vote”! This method can work for you if you have a great idea for a widget or an audience who will happily “announce” that they are associated with you.

There are other ideas but these are the best for small businesses who are looking to increase the number of links they have.

Success in getting links to your website is not an occasional effort. It requires constant thought and intentional effort. Every time you sit down to write a blog, consider how you can entice people to link to you.

photo credit: dno1967b