Startups & Online Business

Links: Web or hyperlinks which connect one web page or site to another web page or site. Check the middle column of our front page www.searchcorp.biz , you will see there is a column of links to my other websites.

Links can be inbound and outbound to your page, example of a link http://www.searchcorp.com.au/ can also have different text on the link ie Buy Google Mini in Australia Note both go to the same site, the second is better for SEO as it tells the search engine what the page is about.

More links to your site generally means better search engine positions, more links with link text that describes what the site does or sells etc means even better results.

So the question becomes how do you build links in Australia?

My view is that this is much harder for Australian SEO and Small Business than in the US. I have a belief (though struggling to find data for this) that Australians don’t use the social networking and tagging sites such as Digg, Technorati, delicious, Redit, Stumbleupon etc as much as the US population does. Therefore getting Australians to tag your site is very difficult, there just isn’t the quantity.

• Requesting links from other sites. Many try to automate this process with bulk emails to others offering to a swap links. My view is that the automated process is a waste of time. Supposedly Google is not that hot on reciprocal links anyway but also the bulk link requests just feels a bit unnatural. On the other hand if you can identify sites that are in similar or complimentary topics to yours and email them and can convince them to make a link to your site this will be of benefit.
• Get Business Partners, Customers and Industry friends or Government or Education sites to create links. Just ask them, many will do this happily where it is appropriate. As an example in my old business I had Cisco, Microsoft and HP linking to me, we would sometimes rank higher than the manufacturers for some of their products. Also www.Dynamicbusiness.com has the Institute of Export plus a bunch of other Government links for Small Business so naturally we are considered to be authoritative for Business and Export. With my Australian Searchcorp site Google Maps Licenses we have a link from Google Australia (it doesnt get much better than that) which means that we rank number 3 worldwide (only after Google and Digg) for the Google Mini and Google Maps Licenses which we sell online there.
• Write, do or Say something amazing, Create Insightful and expert commentary about your industry or topic and ping the social sites (ie Digg, Technorati, etc). This is in my opinion the more difficult to do, but long term the most rewarding. Doing something amazing in your business or Creating unique content specifically about your industry or topic is a sure way to get natural search traffic and links. Write something insightful, critical or creative once a week and post it on your site. Best if you have a Business Blog to do this and if you keep doing this, you will get traffic.
• Paid Links. There is a lot of controversy about this. Google says don’t do it, we will catch you and devalue your site. My view is that they are actually the masters of paid links (its called Adwords or Adsense) but they dont want you to do it. I guess in a way this is ok, otherwise the bigger well funded sites would simply buy all the links they need (like an arms race) and the smaller sites would never get a look in. My view on Paid links is that if you can find a site that is highly relevant to your topic and that can drive traffic to your site that is cost effective then buy the link. Otherwise avoid it.
• Press Releases to online Magazines or News Sites. Obviously they need to be newsworthy and hopefully you will get published, send out one per month every month but make sure that they have your website URL in them.
• www.DMOZ.org listing. This is one of the oldest directory sites that Google, Yahoo and others would use as a starting point for their crawls. It is a very valuable link and up until recently had a good standing. They have recently had issues with Site Editors (the people who approve the link) selling listings in various categories. Go to their site and request a listing for your site (its really tough to get in now, I have made a number of requests for quite respectable sites and nothing happens).
• Yahoo Directory. Pay your $250 and get the listing. It is worth doing.
• Buy a bunch of Domain names with topics that are similar to yours and then create small focussed sites on them and link them to your main site with descriptive text such as Australian Search Engine Marketing Seminars Creating these sites for simply for this purpose is not seen as being very White Hat (ie Search Engine Approved) but they could actually be micro sites for your brands or services which is quite ok, just dont host them all on the same IP/Webhosting company.

There is a lot of talk about bad links, link exchanges and bad neighbourhoods, my view is that if you are a genuine small business owner and you are trying to build links you are probably better off starting with your other local businesses, customers or suppliers.You could go to link exchanges (places that sell Links from lots of others sites to your site), but frankly if it feels wrong or unnatural, then it probably isn’t right.

The search engines have put a lot of effort into trying to pick these Link Exchanges up and then devalue sites that use them. The general consensus is that the Search Engines know when you are using a dodgy link exchange or paying for a link from a dodgy site and they will push you down the Search results as a result, they don’t like you trying to use unnatural means to influence their results and will punish you if you do this, and there is no appeal.

There are many of SEO folk out there who I admire their technical skills that are able to auto generate or buy the right links, frankly they have levels of skill and knowledge in this area that you and I cant hope to match. But keep in mind that there is risk to doing this unnatural link building.

So if you work on getting your friends/customers/suppliers/local sites to link to you, write some expert commentary or articles on your topic and leave all the black hat SEO linking to the experts. This will take longer but will give you a better long term result.