How to get quality inbound links to your site (part I)
The two most important factors in determining your position in the search engine rankings are:
a) the content of your site;
b) the number and quality of inbound links to your site.
An inbound link is when another site links to yours. Search engines like this because it means someone thinks your site is worth linking to. It’s like a vote for your site. The more votes you get, the more relevant your site must be, and the higher it will feature in search engine results.
Because everybody wants links to get their sites up there in the search engines, one great way to get them is to suggest a reciprocal link to a relevant site – that means I link to you if you link to me.
What does ‘relevant’ mean? ‘Relevant’ means something that might be useful to your guests. So restaurants, tourist attractions, local bodies, shops, recreational facilities, etc.
As far as the search engines are concerned, a link is more relevant if it is in the same industry. So travel-related sites will be worth most to you. Leisure-related is also good.
Here’s how you can get relevant sites linking to yours.
1. Find relevant sites
Use a search engine to look for relevant sites in your area. ‘Relevant’ means something that might be useful to your guests. So restaurants, tourist attractions, local bodies, shops, recreational facilities, etc.
Supposing your property is near the town of Bonneville. Type in search terms like ‘Bonneville restaurants’, ‘Bonneville golf course’, ‘Bonneville tourism’. And see if the places you already know of in town have websites.
If Bonneville has an official website it will probably have links to many local businesses’ own sites. These are all good linking targets if they might be useful to one of your guests.
2. Make a list
Make a list of your target sites for Bonneville, and then extend to other towns nearby, and your region/department/county/state as a whole.
3. See what others are doing
One of the joys of the internet is that you can see what people are up to. Not only can you read a site’s source code, but you can see a site’s inbound links. So another way to find good linking targets is to see what other owners like you are up to.
The sites with the most inbound links are likely to be higher in the search engine rankings. These are the sites you want to examine for inbound links. So type into a search engine a search term to find a home like yours and see which ones come up. Note that unless you use a very detailed phrase you will first have to wade through lots of rental listing sites before you come to individual owners’ sites. When you do get to them, copy the url (address of the site).
Now go to a search engine called www.alltheweb.com and type in the following: link:, replacing [url] with the url of a sit ... count.com/
It will tell you what are the most frequently used words on a site, and you can also do a side-by-side comparison with your site.
Copyright Paolo De Paolis 2004
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Part 2 of this article will look at getting links from directories (these can be the best links) and other sources on the internet.
I’ll give you one good tip now. If you post on this forum, make sure you include your site’s url in your signature – that is a link right there, and from a very relevant source.
You can add a url to your signature by logging in, clicking on Profile, and filling in the 'Signature' box. Your url will be made into a clickable link whenever you post.
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Any questions and comments on this, post away beneath this article.
)... I'd like to pick up the point on creating a "links" page.
