Business Blogs

Search engine optimization is not all about keywords and optimized site design, although those are certainly essential. However, the number of incoming links your site has also matters. I’ve touched on the matter of incoming links before, but I didn’t mention how important they were to your blog’s rank.

Link Building and Link Popularity

Link Popularity is a score based on the number of incoming links pointed at your blog. Clearly, the more incoming links you have the better, but link reputation and page importance play a role as well.

You’re nobody until somebody links to you - link building is the single most important part of achieving a high ranking website in modern search algorithms. I repeat, link building is the single most important part of achieving a high ranking website in modern search algorithms.

So how do you get other bloggers and webmasters to link to your blog? First of all, create compelling content that others will be interesting in linking to - content is still king.  Secondly, participate in the blogging community. Be active in relevant discussions, leave substantive comments on other blogs, post on related forums (as always, be sure to place a link to your blog in your signature), and trade links with topical hubs and related sites.

Third, link to other blogs in your niche - you can trade links, or just reward other bloggers with links and it’s likely they’ll return the favor.  Fourth, write glowing testimonials and reviews of services and products related to your blogging topics - chances are they will link back to you when they post them on their own sites.

The Role of Keywords in Link Building

Think of each post and page on your blog as a building block - each is its own unit and has it’s own ranking potential and relevant keywords. Use some of your keywords in each post’s title (search engines index posts by title) and resist the urge to write cutesy or attention grabbing headlines that have little to do with the actual content. You may be successful at gaining some traffic, but it might not be the valuable kind that’s targeted to your blog.

Writing keyword rich titles and headings that are also crisp and concise can do wonders for your blog’s rankings.  Not only will descriptive titles let search engine readers know they’re in the right place - they’ve found what they’ve been searching for - it will also help you out when others link to your site, even if they use the whole URL to cite your blog. Basically, you want people to know what they are clicking on, so you want your keywords to be part of the links that point at your blog.

The next post in my SEO For Bloggers series will cover link baiting and how to use your content as bait to lure in the linkers and readers.