Many small business website owners, find the prospect of link building to be daunting.  It can involve a significant amount of time, effort, and expense, and is often put in the "too hard" basket.

This is a big issue because link building is one of the most important things you can do to improve your search results, traffic, and ultimately your sales or enquiries.

I've collated below a few link building activities that are relatively painless to implement, and can be achieved with a small budget.

Guest Writer or Blogger

If you can talk authoritatively on a particular topic or are an expert in your field, tell the world about it.  Find a blog or site that is closely related to your topic and offer to write an article or two, or see if they are interested in you becoming a guest blogger.   You should be able to include a link to your own site as a part of your signature, and also (if relevant) may be able to link to a page or two on your site that is relevant to the topic.

Charitable Contribution

Donate your time, services or even cash to a charity, nonprofit or community organisation.  Not only will you often be able to get a link back to your site from theirs as a "thank you", but your involvement will have raise the profile of your brand, you'll get a "warm fuzzy" feeling, and you may also be surprised at just how rewarding being involved can be.

Recover Links

Find websites that have mentioned your business, but have not actually linked to you.  Often if you approach these with a quick phone call or email, they may be prepared to include a link to your site.

Establishing contact in this way may also lead to other opportunities, such as guest writing, or even forming a business partnership.

To find these types of sites, try doing a Google search of your business name and see what comes up - you may be surprised.

Business Organisations

Are you involved in any local business organisations or networking groups?  Are there any business associations that you belong to (or could join)?  Make sure you're linked from the websites of any business group or organisation that you belong to.  If they don't happen to have a membership directory, ask if there is any other place on their website they could list you.

Competitor Analysis

Take a look at you competitors and see which websites link to them.  Using a simple query on www.yahoo.com based around the sample below (change competitor.com.au to your competitors domain name) will help you to identify which other sites link to your competitors.  Contact relevant sites in this list to see if they are willing to link to you.

 
There are hundreds of different strategies that can be used to build links - outlined above are just a few of them.  If you'd like to find out more about link building or how ireckon can help you to raise the profile of your website, please feel free to contact us.