A website doesn't stand alone.
All websites and blogs need links to increase their search engine visibility and therefore, rankings.
Links are vital to help get your site and/or blog indexed and to begin the ranking process for low to medium long tail keywords.
Keywords are used to search online through search engines like Google and if you embed/use them in your site or blog they will attract visitors who are searching for a specific topic.
Whenever you set up a new website or blog, link building should be your main activity as you'll need the links for the pages to be indexed so that they start to show up on search engines.
Here are a few key ways to build up links for your website or blog 1.
Make sure you've submitted your website to directories.
You can find lists of web and blog directories online.
It's tedious work but it does get you a lot of backlinks.
2.
Trawl through other sites and link with them by emailing them directly or search through webmaster forums.
These can easily be found online.
3.
Create a series of articles about your website/blog content and submit them to article directories like isnare and EzineArticles.
com.
You'll gain quite a few backlinks from them as well as more when your article is picked up by a publisher and used on other sites.
There are many article directories and again, you'll find them on a generic search online.
4.
Write press releases about the release of your website/blog and post them on PR sites like PRWeb and PRLeap.
They'll distribute it to online news outlets that you couldn't reach! More backlinks! 5.
Set up social media profiles on the main social media sites like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube etc and link them all to your website/blog using one distinctive avatar.
6.
Use social bookmarks like Digg, Delicious and Google Reader to get some social voting on your site or blog as search engines often 'crawl' them and their links help.
7.
Use the forums in your niche to comment and add to discussions and insert your link into your homepage.
You can do this by searching your own niche in Google and look out for forums that you can sound informed on.
8.
Other blogs are vital to your success.
Build up a few of your own in the same niche and then search out others in your niche or in areas that supplement your topic and link build that way using your articles/posts to embed links into to gain backlinks.
9.
Become a guest author/blogger on other sites/blogs.
You need to be a good writer or have a lot of interesting content ready for this though.
10.
Offer your talent.
If you are a web writer, designer, copywriter or in SEO offer your skill set and set up an opening ezine/eshot to send to prospective clients when you see that their web/online offering isn't up to scratch on content quality in return for a mention or credit link.
Nothing replaces your own development of excellent content though.
Try to post at least twice a week and make it interesting but also high quality content.
In this way you build readership and your audience begins to connect with your site/blog and refers back to it regularly.