It would be great if you could easily get lots of links to your site from influential sites like Wikipedia or the New York Times. And have the links be a range such as annapolisrailings-stairs.com, www.annapolisrailings-stairs.com, Annapolis Railings Stairs, metal fabrication, etc. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy, or everyone would do it. Then with everyone having great links, it would mean they weren’t that valuable. So be glad it isn’t easy.

Why Do You Even Care About Links and What are They?

So, is there anything you can do to help? Oh, right, some explanation.  Some may find it obvious, but for those new to internet marketing, there is a good reason you want these links. Search engines use links from other sites to your site as a vote of confidence. If  people don’t like your website, they aren’t going to link their website to yours. So the more links that are going to your website the better. Also, if they are major websites, that is also a big deal.

First Get Links From Yourself

Well, the first thing you want to do is get citations and directory listings like Google My Business, BingPlaces, Yahoo Business, Yelp, FourSquare and others. All of these will link back to your website. This is a start, but doesn’t help a lot because they are essentially votes from yourself.

Trade Associations & Charities

If you are involved with any trade associations and can get a listing in their website that links back to your website, that could be very helpful if the trade association website has any power and influence. Another thing you can do is contact charities you are involved with. If your donate time or money, various charities often have sponsors listed on their website. If you can get a link from the charity website to your website, that can help as well.

Check Out Competitor’s Links

Another thing you can do is to use some software such as MajesticSEO to see what links your local competitors have. There may be organizations that would be happy to mention you or link to you that you haven’t thought about.

Rather than just hoping that people link to you, and having no control over how they do it, by taking this proactive approach, you can probably tell these organizations how you would like them to link to you. The link alone will help, but by influencing what and how they are linking, it will help your site get seen even more.