The Linking War – Using Your Competition to Get Ahead
So you’ve decided to attempt a link building strategy, you must first look at your competitors—and they might not be who you think they are. A competitor is someone who is ranking in the search engines in a spot where your business should be. It is important to closely watch your true competitors, dissecting their website to figure out exactly what it is that makes them rank.
A major part of a websites ranking is the amount of links they have on other websites as well as the quality of those links. A quality link means that an individual within the same field found your website to be an authority, thereby putting a link to your website. For instance, if you own your own hair salon with a well-designed website and articles about proper hair care or product reviews, other websites or blogs may find your information useful to their audience and link to you. This provides more relevant and current content to their audience and you with more traffic. Not every website has an easy task ahead when attempting to gain new links. If your website is difficult to use, unappealing and filled with old, useless content, other websites will not look to send their audience to you.
This is why it is important to use a variety of different methods to relay your content; there are certain things other websites are likely to link to. For instance, if your website has downloadable PDFs, widgets or apps, coupons, forums, contests, job offerings or a blog, there is a higher chance of other websites linking to you. It is so important to know what it is your competitors are doing to beat you to the top. By using tools such as Yahoo Site Explorer and Open Site Explorer, you are able to check your competitor’s backlink profile. From there you can find out which websites are useful to link to and where it is they are getting their links from.
Another important thing to keep in mind, and though it may sound like a broken record, is to know what the keywords are in your niche. You want to know what keywords are bringing traffic to your site, especially which keywords are bringing potential customers. You need to be seen as an authority on the topic, which means your traffic needs to see you as one too. You need to show up for the right keywords directly pertaining to you, and moreover that you need to show up for them over your competitors. By taking the proper steps to allow your customers to find you by using the right keywords, other websites will look to include a link to your website (people keep coming to your website for a reason, so you must have some authority).
In the end, link building is a constant effort to improve your rankings that never really ends. Your competitors, as always, are always working just as diligently to achieve the high rankings. The best defense is a good offense after all, so stay up to date with what it is your competitors are doing and use it to your advantage.
Autumn Eustis joined the Discovery Communications Group in September of 2011 as a search engine marketing associate.
