Link Building Tips
For Studio Owners with Websites

In this article you'll learn:

• Why link building is an important part of optimizing your website

• Why high quality back links are important to your online presence

• What to do beyond getting standard directory links

• Important Do's and Don'ts for your link building campaign

No matter what business you're in, having incoming links to your website is important for two reasons. The most obvious - and most easily understood - is that someone clicking on a link will come directly to your site and see your offerings, which means a potential new customer.

The other - less understood - benefit, is that high quality incoming links can contribute to boosting your site's ranking in search results. What this means is that when someone searches for say, pole dancing classes in your city, your website is likely to come up higher in those results, meaning it's more visible to people and therefore is likely to receive more "clicks" or traffic.

In this case, it's not the link per se that drives traffic (in fact, no one may ever click on it!) but the fact that many high quality links are pointing to your site tells the search engines that your site is important, or an authority in its niche. Therefore, it should be ranked more highly as it's likely to be more useful to visitors than a site that has fewer incoming links, or links of lower quality.

What many business owners don't understand, however, is that it's not just a matter of quantity. The quality of those links matters immensely. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't submit your website to the many free link directories out there, but bear in mind that these links tend to have relatively low value in Google's eyes. For this reason, you'd be wise to diversify your link building campaign and go after some higher quality links as well.

But where do you start?

In addition to submitting your website to free directories, seek out niche directories and relevant, high quality websites in your niche. These would not be your direct competitors of course, but rather sites that contain related content.

For example, a local blogger writing an article about pole dancing might be more than happy to link to your local pole studio website. This is a high quality link because a) it's "real" b) it provides something of value to the blog reader because it directs them to where they can find more information about a topic they're already interested in, and c) it's included in the body of an article, instead of being hidden away on an obscure "links" page.

To help you further understand the importance of high quality links, here's a list of link building Do's and Don'ts

• Don't rely ONLY on free link directories to create effective back links to your site. These links tend not to carry as much weight with Google, so it's important to diversify your link building efforts to include high quality, relevant websites.

• Don't have anything to do with link farms and sites that use unethical methods to generate large numbers of unrelated or questionable back links. Google continues to crack down on these, and links to and from these sites can actually harm your site by association.

• Don't agree to link exchanges with websites in completely unrelated niches. A few years ago, it was common for webmasters to create a "links" page with lists of links going to any and all sites they could swing reciprocal linking arrangements with. These links served no purpose to the site visitors, as the visitors were not likely to be interested in, say, baby furniture if they were on a website about growing tomatoes. The lists of links were purely to try to pump up the number of incoming links to the website. These days, Google is smart enough to know that these links are of poor quality, and takes this into account when ranking your site.

• Don't accept payment for outgoing text links on your site if you also use Google Adsense, unless you make the link "no follow." It's against Google's Terms and Conditions to sell your "link juice" (essentially, your page rank) in this way.

  Once your site is generating a certain amount of traffic, it's common to be approached by SEO companies wanting to buy a text link on your home page for one of their clients. This practice is good for the company you're linking to as they "borrow" some of your page rank (they're typically only interested in sites with high page ranks), but ultimately this is not good for your own website as the links often go to sites that are totally unrelated to your niche.

  The price they're usually willing to pay for the link is not nearly as valuable to you as a highly relevant incoming link from another site in your niche. Keep your link building campaign real and keep your visitors' experience at the top of your mind. Don't be tempted by a few quick bucks, or by anything that sounds too good to be true.

• Do make sure that as much as possible, back links to your site are relevant to your niche and to the content of the page. Of course you can't control which sites link to you, and generally speaking Google won't penalize you for incoming links (with the possible exception of the link farms mentioned above), but you'll do even better by actively seeking out relevant link building partners.

• Do seek out deep links (links that go to pages on your site other than your home page) and try to match the incoming link to a relevant page on your site that you'd like to drive additional traffic to.

• Do be proactive in your link building efforts. A high quality, well-trafficked site will generate a certain number of incoming links on its own, but you'll probably need to get the ball rolling. Contact other website owners with related content or a related product or service to offer, (not your direct competitors of course!) and propose a quality, win-win link exchange.

• Do offer to coach your link partners on how you would like your link to appear, but be prepared to do the same for them. Of course, the more highly ranked your site is, and the more traffic it gets, the more say you'll have in the matter, but it never hurts to suggest that your link be placed on a certain page, or to provide the exact link text you'd like used.

• Do be fair and ethical with your link building partners. My belief is that business dealings should always be win-win. If you have specific expectations for how back links to your site should be displayed, be willing to offer the same high quality opportunities to your link partners. Many business owners don't have much knowledge of linking on their websites, so you can do them a favour by educating them while at the same time giving and receiving a high quality link.

Of course, link building is only a small part of SEO, which is a huge topic!

I can only scratch the surface of it here, but if this is a topic that interests you, and you'd like me to write more on it for a future issue of Pole Biz - The Pole Studio Business Building Newsletter, please let me know!

I always welcome your feedback as I aim to provide timely, useful information relevant to pole studio owners everywhere.