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Just when you think your great new website will help customers find your company, you learn there’s more to do to keep it in front of people. New websites have to get a lot on the ball quick. It doesn’t seem fair, does it? But you really have no choice on this one, folks, you have to take steps in the right direction regularly or all you have is a pretty, unseen, and virtually unusable website.

I want to spend a little time explaining links, why different links matter, and why you need a healthy mix of them all for maximum benefit. Links show the relationship between your reader’s interests and your website information.

When you have a well-linked business website, you show that your interest is in your visitor’s experience, that you’re a resource for them. When your visitors follow links, they agree with you. Last year, Google made changes concerning ‘content relevance.’ The more easily your visitor browses page to page, following those links in and out of your website, the more authority your website is given because they believe your content is then more relevant. Links weigh in heavily when Google decides who gets top billing, so learn everything you can about how to use them wisely.

Internal Links
Internal links take a reader from one page of your website to another. Done properly, they add value to your reader’s experience because the information on each page adds to the information on the other. Each of your pages should contain some common reason a reader might want to look farther into your website, and a link helps make that easy for them. Make it even easier when you link actual words used in the course of an explanation. For example:

Instead of writing, Click here for more information on your business website page,

An Inside Line reader will be invited to learn more about website marketing strategies.

Additionally, each page of your website should be easily accessed by your visitor from every page, unless you have areas available by subscription only.

From every page, your visitor should be able to get to:

• Navigation bar
• Blog post links to landing pages
• Blog post links to other blog posts, and your
• Contact page

External Links
External links are also valuable, adding credibility to your site. Offer additional detail about your product or service through a link to a higher authority website to become a resource for your reader.

For instance, links to .gov or .edu sites are generally accepted to be trusted resources. If you write about things that can be backed up by information found on a page of a .gov or .edu site, your link to that additional information helps your reader. If you operate a plumbing business, link to a water conservation site. If you own a HVAC company, a link to a page of product information from the brands you carry will also be helpful.

Visitors will be more likely to follow that link, and also more likely to link to your page when it’s a handy reference. Your material becomes more shareable, increasing your website’s value.

Back Links
Back links weigh the heaviest, but building them takes the longest time and most strategic effort. Back links are links that exist in other locations that connect to your website. The sites linking to yours should also come from a healthy mix of locations that vary in authority.

Because of their importance, there are many shady ways to build these. If you use a WordPress website, you notice in your comment dashboard all the totally freaky, terrible ways this is done stemming from all over the globe. Don’t think to yourself, “Oh, that’s how you do it,” you’ll be wrong. Shari wrote about this in her post, How To Recognize Comment Spam, and I showed a good example in my post, Your SEO Company Can Actually Hurt Your Business.

Building back links correctly starts with being absolutely certain that you offer information others need or want. That means good website copywriting, and posts about things that matter to your client base.

The best ways to take advantage of the web are through listing your company in high authority directories. Every company has a ‘Top 5′ directories list their industry typically does well being listed in. A correctly-filled-out profile with an accurate website link will benefit a company three ways:

1. Directories are always listed first in search results so your company is easily found by consumers, and
2. Your company’s link carries the authority from the directory, improving your overall rank, and
3. The best directories give your clients and customers an opportunity to review your company publicly and then share it with their social media contacts. (Super important to Google right now.)

I can’t stress enough how important this is to do.

Additionally, back links can be accumulated when you spend time reading other blogs and commenting on them.

• They can be built using a good 2.0 strategy. (Ask me about this.)
• They’re also built every time you use your website link in a social media profile, usually regardless of whether or not you communicate there. (NOT suggesting to NOT communicate.)
• They can be built using article marketing, and
• Press releases

Get started when you leave me your comments below! We use the CommentLuv plugin to help our readers get exposure for their websites – go ahead, try it out.

There are a lot of ways to develop healthy back links to your business website. MerchantCircle is on our short list because it really does a great job gaining exposure for local business.  

This is no stagnant listing, as most are. The more active you are at building connections and adding blogs and newsletters, the more local exposure you gain. The MerchantCircle Newsletter goes out to every business listed in the directory, regardless of whether or not you’ve written a blog post or newsletter. But if you do want the areas and cities you’ve chosen to hear about your company, all you need to do is post a short blog, newsletter – or even answer a question – to be circulated among your neighboring businesses at no charge!

If you budget an hour a month you’ll be able to see big advantages to this directory.

Newsletters
A newsletter through MerchantCircle goes further than their blog post option. It actually goes out to all email addresses you want to import, as well as to the business connections you make when you use their ‘connections’ option. It also goes to every business MerchantCircle sends to in the areas and cities you’ve chosen. You can set the publish time and even review it before you send. I’ve found they actually send it more than once.

Why I don’t use this as my primary account:
This isn’t the most professionally crafted newsletter, and often the edits I’ve made before publishing don’t take. Also, I find images are hard to add correctly. The preview usually doesn’t appear as expected, so as a professional writer, it’s not the best place for me to showcase my work. I truly believe ANY OTHER business could use this more often effectively.

Blogs
When you blog through the directory, the MerchantCircle Newsletter will announce that your business recently blogged and share the title with their recipients. It’s smart to link to your business website from here, the authority link is great.

Why I don’t use this often:
Once again, as a professional writer, I have enough to keep up with! Every once and awhile I do post to my local business account, SusanHamiltonCopywriting.com, but image issues and spacing bug me. It simply takes too long for me to keep up this platform as my sole broadcast, and I have no time to deal with those issues when I can use higher quality services for that.

I don’t recommend this as any company’s sole blogging platform, but it is definitely worth using to discuss local recommendations, promotions, and seasonal discounts or coupons. The information will definitely be circulated through their newsletter and benefit your website.

Connections
Connections are a brilliant way to share B2B information and get other companies to frequent your main business website/blog. You become interesting when you’re actively sharing your perspectives throughout their newsletter and blog services, and other companies tend to want to know more about you. Also, they’re more likely to comment on your material and that interaction is pure gold. You get notifications through your email when others want to connect with you, making it very easy to stay involved. I love this feature!

Questions
I give this both a thumbs up and a thumbs down. I see where this is great for local business; I even see where I could use it better. But I’ve also seen really bad recommendations written poorly in response to questions. The answer box can go as long as you need it to, but there isn’t any HTML so even if you think you have paragraphs and links in your answer, you may not. The whole thing can look like a big, unreadable paragraph.

My advice:
Use with caution. Keep answers as tidy as possible, and use sparingly.

Reviews
I suggest taking advantage of the review option. Review other companies, and accurately share your MerchantCircle business listing URL in follow up emails after a sale or service appointment to encourage reviews of your company. Actively ask for these reviews, they weigh heavy and will benefit your reputation for a long time. Bad reviews happen once and awhile, and if you can’t find a solution for an unhappy customer, know that more good reviews push the bad one down the page. Encourage happy people to post reviews for the most benefit from this feature. Ask after a sale, and then send a request link in a follow up email for best results.

MerchantCircle Listing Services
Local listing services mass upload your company information to many locations, but the listings are often inaccurate due to different criteria requirements between directories, and one solution just can’t do it all well.

We suggest you do it yourself, and we developed a series of video tutorials that will help you understand what not to miss as you fill out your information.

Sign up to learn how to pace yourself at one per week and get it done right, for free! I’ll show you common mistakes so you can avoid them, and with regular progress, you’ll see how to realistically improve your search engine authority over the course of a year.

Sign up today!

As a matter of fact, not all directories are harmless.

It is important to list your business in human-edited directories; we even teach you how to do it correctly yourself. Directories are  a great way to  promote your company, improve your back links and gain exposure.

But watch out.

Some sound good but can suck hundreds of dollars out of your account in the blink of an eye. 

I know enough about this stuff that I should have seen it coming, but if I can get swindled, it’s that much easier for a business that doesn’t understand what’s happening.

We teach you how to get the most out of free online business directories, but know that they are always after you to purchase their upgrades. In my view, it’s an unnecessary expense that you can hardly get out of. I don’t advocate paying for these upgrades and I know how to avoid the snares they set. Their free versions have a huge benefit, and their paid versions are often quite costly when you read the fine print.

Human-edited directories  call or email you to confirm your information -  and expect you to approve your inclusion. It’s all reputable.

But here’s where it can get confusing for many, and I can now include myself because I was ‘had.’

I was in the middle of several tasks, like anyone would be in the middle of the morning. Got a call from a directory ‘updating my listing.’ U.S. Directory no less. I’m listed in so many places that by memory alone I couldn’t possibly know if I had requested free inclusion there. It sounded like a place I may have submitted to, so I answered all of their very detailed questions for quite some time.

Eventually, this guy mentions that it will cost me $5.00 a month, and that I have to give him my credit card info to get started. Now, that made me pause. That was the first I realized that this was a sales call! I had him verify a ton of stuff. He emailed me. He gave me his supervisory credentials and I ended up thinking to myself, “What if this is a great, inexpensive idea that I could use for my clients? I’ll go ahead and check it out for $5.00 a month.”

So then he tells me that I’ll be getting trackable leads, and for that it will cost .25 for each lead that I get. I’m thinking, “Hmm, let’s see what that means. Paying clients are easily worth that. I’ll monitor this and see where it goes.”

One month passes. Got a five dollar charge. Another month passes, got another five dollar charge. I totally forgot about this thing.

On the third month, I was almost charged $400.00! My bank flagged it as unusual and left me a message that for some reason I didn’t get. Because the bill was flagged and it didn’t get paid,  I got an email. Had I not received the email from U.S. Directory telling me that they paused my activity due to non-payment, I never would have known what they were trying to do.

I immediately went online to my account with U.S. Directory to see what was going on, only to find that they were claiming they had sent me over 1400 leads! Really? No one I spoke to had referred to them – and I ASK. I went into my Google Analytics and could easily see that was crap. They must have counted every robot that ever went into my site as a lead. None of my analytics tools can verify the leads they said they sent me!

Conveniently, their ‘trackable’ analytics were down. Go figure.

I’m not paying for that, and neither should you. I went to my bank to see what could be done, and we disabled that card so they couldn’t  syphon any more money from my account. It bothered me all day. What if this had happened to a business owner whose bank wasn’t as protective and thorough as mine?

That’s a painful bite for anyone to take, for NO REASON WHATSOEVER. I would have gladly paid that for 1400 leads! But it was completely fraudulent. It didn’t happen. How stupid to try that on someone who knows where to look to verify claims like that!

So beware, people. Not everyone sporting a great name is out there to help you. Some are downright predatory.

My advice? Ask at the onset of the call if the directory is paid or free. Many have free versions, and for the back link, that works. Paid versions will claim to post your business listing in premium locations on the search engines, charging nominal fees for leads. They didn’t send me any leads, folks.  It was a big, fat, hairy lie. Run, don’t walk, away from any service that will fraudulently claim to send you leads for money.

You absolutely have to have your own analytics solutions.

Not all paid directories are dirty, but telling the difference is mighty hard to do. Do you have a similar experience? Warn others in the comments below.

If you’ve been diligently building links to your website, good for you! Generating inbound links to your site is one of the most important things you can do to improve your website’s visibility on the search engines. But are all those links going to your home page? 

SEO Link Building 101

Each page of your website has a job to do. Each page represents a unique opportunity to share information about one specific topic – and to rank in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for that one topic. If you’re only building links to your home page, you’re limiting the ability of other pages to be found – meaning this grossly limits your website’s potential. Linking to pages other than your home page is referred to as ‘deep linking.’

How to Build Deep Inbound Links

When you leave your name, website address and comment on this site, the ‘Comment Luv’ plugin pulls the title and link to your latest blog post and adds it to your comment. If you’re a blogger, that’s an automatic deep link. If your website doesn’t include a blog, you can accomplish the same thing by leaving a specific page link in the website address field.

Think of other places you can link back to pages on your site. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn quickly come to mind, but those are just the top of the iceberg for social sharing sites.  ‘Add This’ lists 300+ social sharing opportunities! Some business directories allow you to leave deep links. How about industry forums where you participate, publishing your expertise through article directories, guest posting on another business blog?

Since inbound links are so important to the success of your website, make a commitment today to begin or renew your link building efforts. Feel free to begin here. We’d love to hear from you in the comments!