So you have a great new website and it has been up for months now. Or maybe your website has even been up for years.   Why aren't you showing up better in the search engines?  There could be a number of reasons, but there is one, in particular, that most companies are unaware of or simply push aside without realizing its significance.

Link strategy is the single most neglected part of website markeitng but it helps enormously in search engine ranking.

How many other companies link to your website?  How many link to your competitors?  Put in your own website address and the addresses of a few of your competitors at www.marketleap.com in their Link Popularity tool.  You'll likely find that your higher ranking competitors swamp you in link popularity.  They have more "votes" in their favor and that helps them show up higher than you do in the search results.

So why are links important?  Simple.  Becauase the search engines use them as an important measure of the quality and relevance of a site.  Many search engines view the world wide web as a democratic entity.  Basically, the more "votes" you have in your favor, as evidenced by other sites linking to your site, the more popular your site is considered.  So combined with good content and good structure, link popularity can boost you significantly in the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

But there are also pitfalls to avoid and issues to be aware of.  You can be penalized for participating in link farms.  You want relevant linking partners.  You will likely have to offer links in order to get links; reciprocal linking.  However, you also want some informative outbound links that are not reciprocated, so that your site is viewed as a resource, not just a link farm.  You want links from sites that are indexed on the search engines and that have good link popularity themselves because a link from a site unknown to the search engines does you no good.  And you want to make sure the links are appropriate for your website.  For instance, a general line  industrial distributor could link with all kinds of manufacturers, but has little business linking with poker and casino sites, or with grandma's home-made cookies site.

So go to any search engine and look up "link popularity articles" and you'll be inundated with reading materials.  And if you want your site to be more successful, you'll need to dedicate plenty of time and effort over many months, forever, to learning about and pursuing a smart linking strategy.  Link strategy takes constant effort but  the pay-off is usually months away.  So start it today and stick with it by building it into your routine.  Otherwise, you should hire an outside source to pursue and manage your link strategy on your behalf. Be sure to use MarketLeap to create a benchmark report so you can check your progress.

And get started immediately!  Post your free link on the Carolinas Industrial Directory at BaerMarketingNetwork.com.   Good luck with your link building effort!