Strategic Website Linking

Inbound link development concentrates on acquiring links from related sites that could drive potential customers to the Web site. First establish links with those sites that we have found in the Internet Sales and Marketing Business Plan, leveling the playing field with your competitors. Next, we establish strategic links including industry association Web sites, portals, directories and other related non-competitive Web sites. Developing incoming links has two advantages:

Links pointing towards your website from other sites drive traffic

Search engines take into account something called“link popularity”

Note: it is important to create links that are relevant to your specific website theme. Irrelevant links will not increase your link popularity and may end up hurting more than helping. In addition, the more links you have on your page (or that your link partner has on his page) the less "relevant" each link is). What does this mean? The most powerful link partners are those that are relevant and have few other links on the page.

Affiliate/Associate Program

An excellent way of increasing link popularity and driving new business to your website is by implementing an affiliate program where your local vendors, associations, attractions, etc are paid a commission for sending referrals from their website to yours. You would place a link on your website to “Become an Affiliate.” Affiliates place a link on their website to yours. We use an affiliate program to track monthly commissions, sign up new affiliates, track visitors and sales for each affiliate.

Strategic Website Community

Being a part of your local community is imperative for many businesses. With the advent of the internet has come the website or "virtual" community. For clients wanting a “quick fix” for link development, creation of a web communityis an option. This entails the development of 5 or more websites that are related, but separate from the “target” website. Each site must stand on its own and have useful, relevant content. They are marketed separately, but strategically link back to the main website at the center of the community. This concept can be quite powerful for the overall organization for clients that have websites in several locations, or for clients where community involvement is paramount to their business' success.

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