Tuesday 14th January 2020 at 08:57 By Rob |
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This article is great for you if you fit into any of the below:-
In this article I'll explain the importance of inbound linking, and why it is a MAJOR component of being found organically on Google.
This article is designed as a plain English, simple guide for small business owners selling antiques, art, vintage items and retail products online about what inbound links are, and how to use them to boost your Google rankings.
Where possible I've done my best to turn tech speak into simple English for normal people!
Inbound links are links from other websites to your website.
Let's take an example...
Inbound links would be things such as:-
Inbound links are not to be confused with outbound links. An outbound link is when you have a link on your website pointing to somebody else's website. For example, if you sell Antique Chairs you might have a link to some specialist antique shipping companies on your website. These would be outbound links.
With well over a billion websites online now, Google can't have them all ranking on page 1 for popular search terms. Google uses a whole range of things to judge how websites rank. One of the most important of these is inbound links. Google uses these as a gauge of how popular and credible your website is.
So think of using inbound links as Google's popularity contest for your website.
Image: Antique Chairs from our client Appley Hoare Antiques
It's not just about having LOTS of links to your website. In fact, having lots of links can sometimes have very little effect (or even a negative effect if they're spammy links). Here are the best kinds of links:-
There are various tools out there to find out, many of which you have to pay for or will only give you limited information without having to pay.
A great tool for finding out who links to you is the Link Explorer from Moz. This will help you measure your website in terms of domain rank and page rank (a number out of 100 on how well ranked your site is from an inbound links perspective). There are limits to what they'll show you without you paying for their service, but the amount of info you can get for free is very good, so it's a great place to start.
Tools:-
One very important thing to remember is building good quality links will usually take time. Patience and a bit of graft is essential.
If patience isn't an option, and you're deseperate for traffic from Google much quicker then we'd strongly recommend Google Adwords and Google Shopping (these are paid for advertising services on Google - https://ads.google.com/ but you will need a sensible budget of at least a few hundred £ / $ / € per month and somebody who knows what they're doing to manage it all for you).
Here are some ideas on how you can get websites linking to yours:-
Believe it or not some links can be BAD links! These do more harm than good to your Google rankings.
Many devious and unscrupulous businesses offer search engine optimisation (SEO) services which sell spammy links. This often involves creating websites that do little other than link to other websites. Google have gotten wise to this, and weed out these spammy and artificial websites. In some cases Google also penalize websites that leverage links like this.
Often business owners can fall for the claims made by companies like this and pay for these SEO services to find their rankings jump to page 1 for an extremely short period of time, then to fall from the face of the earth thereafter.
So if you get an email out of the blue from someone offering you SEO services or inbound links; avoid, avoid, avoid!
Of course before you do any of this make sure you start with a website which has been built to be search engine optimised and to Google's latest standards. This is certainly something we can help with as we've been building websites since 2004. Click here to contact us about our web design services
Once you have a site built to Google's standards, and you've written item titles and descriptions properly then if you'd like a decent flow of traffic from Google and you're not going to be doing Google AdWords & Google Shopping then inbound linking should be a high priority for you and/or your PR company.
We can help you sell online easily too!
We have been helping small and medium sized independent businesses sell online easily since 2004, and we can help you too.
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