How a Link Building Program Can Help Google Find Your Small Business Website

Most successful websites will have some level of search engine optimisation at work, or some heavy time spent on social media sites and marketing in order to achieve good levels of organic traffic.

Basic search engine optimisation involves the careful use of keywords for a website, but a natural extension of this strategy is a link building program.

Why do you need an effective link building service?

Link building is important in your search engine results, in that sites that have other related sites linking to them are more highly regarded than sites that have no inpointing, or inbound links. Google are particularly known for favouring sites with good levels of inpointing links.

Google gives sites a ranking, known as Page Rank, or Google Page Rank- based on their perceived importance on the web, but also related to their inbound links. Gaining inpointing links is a bit like networking in the real world, or 'seeding' your site online. I think of it as being like dropping a whole lot of seeds in different places, making easier for people to find you.

A link coming in from a related website is like a 'thumbs up' for your site, and the more of these you can get, the better your search engine results will be.

It is important, though, that your link building program slowly builds over a period of time. Link farms and the like, who give you thousands of links for a sum of money are a waste of time, and can risk your site actually being penalised because the linking is 'manufactured', and is not happening organically.

Inbound links can come from a variety of sources:

• Link Exchanges with related sites- the I'll link to you, and you to link to me strategy
• Directory Listings - some are free, some paid
• Writing Articles Online - share your expertise as well a gaining inbound links
• Blogs and Forums - being active within your niche shows you as an expert and can help links
• Social Media - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube all offer opportunities for shared information and links.

If you think that you need to work on the links for your website but don't know where or how to start, then a link building expert can undertake keyword research for you and provide a framework for your link building to happen.

Anyhoodles, based in Melbourne, Australia, provide web services, mentoring, seo help and link building packages to help you build and manage a successful website for your small business.