Getting links to your website can easily be related to real world networking in the business world. Think about it you go to a networking event and the first to greet you are probably your suppliers. Your suppliers have a vested interest in your success; you do more business, they do more. They’ll be happy to introduce you to their other clients, hoping perhaps for a little cross pollination. So you ask, where do I start to get links, you start with your suppliers.
Not only are links from your suppliers amongst the easiest to request they are also high quality links due to the on topic nature of your businesses. Since the earliest days of Google with their “link counting and Page rank algorithm” SEO’s have proven that on topic links from websites relevant to yours (meaning in the same or similar businesses or website theme topic) have the highest value. They are the most relevant and link relevance is a key factor in Google’s algorithm to this day.
Depending on the mature of your business your clients may have websites. Can you ask your clients for a link to your website? Of course you can. Your company is a top performing supplier of goods and or services and you have lots of satisfied clients. Each person in your organization who has direct contact with clients needs to ready to make a link request to your clients who have websites. It’s probably not the best idea to cold call your clients for website links; however upon completion and follow up on any sale, while the client is commending your rep for delivering as promised, going above and beyond there request and expectations… that’s a great opportunity for your rep to make the request by saying “by the way… we’re looking to add links to our website would you be willing to add a link to our website from yours…”. You’ll find that many of your clients have special places set aside on their website where they list and have links to their primary suppliers. Many clients will be happy to give you a link as a way of thanking you for great service and insurance towards your future support.
Ask your friends and family for links. With the widespread use of social media you can simply ask through these channels if any friends have websites or if they can ask their employers if they would be open to linking to your website.
Finally if you make your website a valuable asset your website will collect links for you while you sleep. That’s right if you’re website offers something of value, maybe a tutorial, a how-to, a parts list, diagrams, drawings or great photographs you can actually grow your link profile without solicitation.
Follow these recommendations and your website will grow its link popularity naturally, just as Google had seen websites were growing before they launched the most popular search engine today which initially was able to outperform all other search engines simply by ordering their search results based on the link popularity of the websites they returned in search results!
