You probably already know that having other web sites link to your site is one way that Google and other search engines rank your site for popularity. And popularity is everything when you want your site or CafePress shop to be found on the web.
But for any linking method to really work, you need to have a site worth linking to. So spend time up front creating something unique, original and interesting so that people will want to link to you.
Now there are many ways to go about getting links to your site, but I'll share one way that will help you get quality links and help you to work smarter instead of harder. Why? Because one quality link is worth ten links on low ranking sites.
To illustrate, I'll use an example.
Let's pretend that I have a CafePress shop that sells funny Vegetarian T-shirts. Here's how I would look for "quality" vegetarian sites using Google Directory.
1) Go to Google.
2) While on the Google home page, click on "more" and then click on "even more."
3) This will bring you to "More Google Products." Now click on the Directory.
4) Now that we're in the Google Directory, I have no idea where they would categorize "vegetarian." Where do I go? Is it under Health? Is it under Society issues?
5) To find out where Google categorizes Vegetarian sites, I'll type in "Vegetarian" in the search box and click the "Search Directory" button.
6) Once I've clicked on the search directory button, I'll get a list of search results...but I'm not interested in these right now. I want to see where Google categorizes Vegetarian since I want Vegetarian sites to link to my Vegetarian T-Shirt store. And to find quality sites, I'd like to see them as they appear in the directory itself.I see the category hierarchy and click on "Vegetarian."
7) Finally! This is where I want to start hunting for quality links.
This is a Google Directory page (notice it looks different than a regular Google search results page). The little bars on the left indicate a web site's popularity, or page rank.
When a site has a bar that is "full" or all green, that site is ranked a #1 (meaning, when I do a search for "vegetarian" a site with a full bar would be ranked #1 in a search). When half of the bar is full that's a page rank of #5. Keep in mind this bar graph thingy is general, but it's still a good way to see which sites Google considers to be quality sites.
8) Any site with a page ranking (bar graph) that is a 5 or higher is a good place to start. Any of these sites will be very high quality links if you're able to get your site listed on them.
Let's click on the top result, since it has a high page rank. I click on the Vegetarian Resource Group website and it looks like this:
9) Very nice. Looks like a good site to me. Now, I look to see if there is a logical place where the Vegetarian Resource Group might want to list my site. So I scroll down and notice a "links" link in the navigation bar at the left (towards the bottom)...
10) I click on the "links" link to see what they have listed. I scroll down to the bottom of their links page and there is this line: If you know of other organizations/links that should be included, please email [us]. Thanks.
11) Don't be shy!This is where people ask me, "But what do I say? What if they say 'no'?"
To which I respond, "Be yourself and it's not the end of the world if they say no!"
So first and foremost be polite and be yourself. Compliment them if they have a nice site (we all know how much work it is to build a nice web site!) and thank them for their time (we all know how precious our time is!). Just think, there's another person at that email address, probably just like you, who's running an online business and actually wants good sites to link to and might appreciate that they didn't have to look for you.
Just say something like,
"Hello, my name is Joe Shopkeeper and I wanted to let you know about my new T-shirt and gift store I just opened.
It's called Joe's Funny Vegetarian T-Shirts & Gifts and here is the URL if you'd like to include it in your links page (list url).
I thought maybe your visitors might find it useful when they're looking for vegetarian T-shirts or gifts. I also have some free vegetarian recipes on my site you're welcome to link to.
Please let me know if you have any questions as I'm happy to help. Thanks so much for your time and your great web site. What a great resource it is for us vegetarians!
Kind Regards,
[Me]"
That's really all there is to it.
I've written tons of these letters every time I add a new design to BusyBodies. I get some people who don't respond, I get some emails that bounce back, I get some "no thanks" emails, I get some emails asking for reciprocal links (we'll talk about that in another post), and occasionally I get an email back saying "thank you for the link, great site, I've added your link to our directory."
Success! It takes time, which is why Google still uses quality links as a criteria...they take work. But at least you know a smart way to go about finding quality links.
Let me know if this works for you or if you have any other methods you've tried that work. I'll cover more techniques in future posts.
