Link development for small business

Link development is the practice of improving the position of your website in search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Basically, link development isn't the same as link building. Unlike traditional practices of acquiring links – any links – by whatever means necessary, link development is based on strategy to build organic backlink growth.

The quality of the website linking to your site improves your page ranking. Also, site placement matters because links that are part of the content are more valuable than footer links or blogroll links.

Today, Google and other SEO-centric search engines (like Blekko) are spending a fair amount of time and resources figuring out the differences between an organic or natural link and those links that have been “built”. Link development – the practice of building deep links – is the new link building.

The Basics of Link Development

Link development is not the same as link building. Unlike traditional practices of acquiring links – any links – by whatever means necessary, link development is based on strategy to build organic backlink growth. Developing links of the highest quality (and best value to search engines) requires that we follow some basic guidelines.

Anchor text
One of the factors that search engines notice is anchor text frequency. The correct way to improve your page ranking with anchor text liking to content in other sites. The cumulative effect of participation will benefit your brand and SEO efforts. Beware, constantly creating links for one or two keywords and repeating those terms in anchor text will set off red flags with the search engines as nonorganic link building and will hurt your page ranking.

Site placement matters
Links that are part of the content are more valuable than footer links or blogroll links.

Powerful Link Development Techniques

Now that we have a grip on a few basic but essential link development techniques, it’s time to look at some ways to build highly valuable links through more intricate means.

Content
Content is king. Remember, the web is about quality information. So, create one or two articles for your website that your customers will find valuable. By doing this, the number of hits on your webpage will increase and other websites will create links to your web site. Content doesn't have to be limited to written articles. You can also create an informative video, or create a useful widget. These are powerful link development technique.

Infographics
Infographics are a great way to develop topically relevant links to your website.

Tracking your results

Tracking your link development process is extremely important — as a small business owner, you already know that you are driving blind without measurement. Here are some ways of tracking your link.

Google Webmaster
The Google Webmaster Tool offers day-by-day updates on your site’s health, internal and external links, keyword ranking, visits and click-through data. Some of the most useful features are:

• Monitor internal and external links
• Evaluate site performance
• Project traffic/revenue based on search query analysis
• Track duplicate Title/Meta Tags
• Track crawl errors
• Submit sitemaps

Open Site Explorer (opensiteexplorer.com)
Open Site Explorer is a robust tool that gives insight into your site’s link graph, anchor text distribution and trustrank.

• Link Graph: You can plot your very own link graph by tracking changes on Open Site Explorer’s “external followed links”. By plotting the number of links that point to your site each week you can keep a close watch on your link graph.

• Anchor Text Distribution: This metric helps with competitive sizing.