Posts Tagged ‘content’

Make your site linkworthy

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Link building is one of those activities which is usually frowned upon by Google, to varying degrees. Typically if you are paying for links, Google doesn’t like it much. If you are building links through active means but without payment, then usually that is OK. Google’s own guidelines follow the “if you build it, they will link it” rule – meaning that you should concentrate on making good content, a usable site and inevitably you will see more links coming your way.

All of this is easier than it sounds, though. Making a site linkworthy is an elusive art, but there are a few tips to help you on your way:

  1. Don’t fill your site with ads. You may want to make money, but users are no more receptive to being bombarded with ads on the internet than they are in the street. If you’re the kind of person who thinks that at least 50% of the visible portion of a page should be used for adverts, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
  2. Post content regularly, or at the least evenly. By this I mean don’t write 10 blog posts and have them all come out over 10 days in sequence. Spread them out for your more busy periods when you won’t be posting content. This will keep people coming back as they will come to expect this regularity from your site. This will help build links, too.
  3. Don’t just copy another article and shift a few words around. Write original content for your site even if it is about a topic being talked about across a huge variety of sites. Take the Apple iPad for instance – there will be thousands of blog posts about it by now but the ones which stand out are the original ones, and standing out will get you links.

I will be talking about this more in the future, but I think it is something important for website owners to pay attention to. The days of gaming the system are now starting to fade, meaning you will have to work hard to get your site to the top.