Inbound links or “backlinks” (links pointing to your website from another one) can have great benefit in terms of both ranking AND indexing of your site. For instance, more links pointing to you emanating from a site that also has a lot of links will contribute to your site’s PageRank (A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself). This will sometimes aid the website in ranking higher for particular keywords. Also, the PageRank number (a scale of 0-10) is proportional to the amount of pages Google decides to crawl and then index. The benefits are really two fold.

Getting backlinks is not that easy, however. You must be proactive and attempt to garner new linking opportunities as often as possible. Granted, the better the content on the site, the more people who will want to naturally link to you, but that is only two thirds of the battle. Having a great website with great content does not mean that you will move from position 30 to position number 1 without getting your name out there and alerting other webmasters to your presence.

You also need specific types of links. The general consensus used to be that any link from a “.edu” or a “.gov” domain will automatically award your site great rankings, but the Google algorithm is savvy to this and Google is now specifically looking at the relevance of the website linking to you and how much of a “hub” site or authority it really is. 

While browsing through one of my favorite morning show websites, I noticed pictures of a charity event.  As I followed those links and went to the event’s page, I also noticed that there was a page with a list of sponsors.  To my surprise, the links to the websites were not “no follow”. The links also contained quality anchor text.

This made me think about how sponsoring events could be a great link building opportunity.  Sponsoring local events in your area is positive for the community and beneficial for your link building efforts because the links are high quality and relevant. 

With the summer approaching, many communities and organizations in your area will be hosting events, fundraisers, running events and more.  Keep your eye out for these events to see if there are relevant sponsorship opportunities to incorporate into your link building efforts.  Sponsoring events can not only help your link building efforts, but it can also increase your brand’s reputation on and offline.  Showing your customers that you care about the community can help to solidify their decision when choosing your goods or services versus a competitor’s.

So, the next time you are involved in an event, ask about the sponsor page and think about the possible link building opportunities that can go along with it.

Building quality inbound links to your site has never been tougher, but there is one quick thing you can do to find quality links that doesn’t take much effort. One of the easiest ways to start out a link building program is to go looking for links that you should already have. By this, I mean that if you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’re probably already listed in various places on the internet. What you want to do is make sure that your website is included in your listings.

To find these potential link building opportunities, you can start by searching for yourself using Google, Yahoo or Live.com. Then, just check out any pages you find that are showing up for your name. If the site listing you is a local search directory, community organization, industry directory or other type of listing that includes a profile of your business, make sure there is a link there back to your website.

In some cases, it may be necessary to pay a listing fee to modify your profile. If so you will want to evaluate the site to make sure that it is worth the listing. Basically, is it likely that anyone will find you there and then click through to your site? Will a listing there get you enough traffic to pay for the link? If so, go ahead and pay the fee. If not, then the listing is probably not worth it. Never pay for a link just to get a link.

However, there are still lots of sites that freely allow you to modify your listing and in that case; this is a great way to get a quick and easy relevant link. If the site is an authority in your industry, that one link could even have a marked effect on your rankings. So, if you’re looking for links, first try looking for yourself. You never know what you might find.