Secrets of Successful Small Business Websites

If you build a better website, will the world beat a path to your door? I hate to disappoint anyone, but it’s not likely.

A great website will cause your visitors to hang around to see what you have to say, but on its own, will do little to draw new customers.

Now, if that great website is search engine optimized, contains fresh and interesting content, and has relevant links pointing to it from other sites … well, that’s a completely different story. Note that this isn’t an even / or proposition. Highly visible websites are search engine optimized, have a continual infusion of fresh, interesting content, AND hundreds of inbound links. If your site can’t be found, it’s missing one or more pieces of this puzzle.

Even with all the pieces in place, expect that it will take some time. While you’re waiting, don’t just sit there … continue adding content, continue link building.

What Do You Mean, Link Building?

Inbound links are gained primarily in five ways:

1. Build links through social bookmarking and social networking sites. While hundreds of these sites can be found online, for the sake of brevity (and sanity), I’ll only mention a few popular sites here. And before naming these sites, let me assure you that I’m not advocating spamming them, and to proceed with caution. Create a profile; lurk for awhile; take notice of the prevailing culture before submitting any links from your site. If your content is a poor fit for the site’s audience, skip it and move on. Ok, so with that groundwork barely covered, check out Digg, Delicious, Propeller, and StumbleUpon. And don’t forget about Twitter, covered previously on this blog.
2. Build links through Web 2.0 sites. This class of linkbuilding includes building (writing) a Squidoo lens, Hub page or Weebly site, writing articles for article directories, etc. The advantage is that you’re building and creating your own feeder content to link back to your site. It’s time-intensive, but effective.
3. Build links through directory submissions. This can be further divided into submitting to free and paid directories. I recommend a balanced approach, but there’s more to this category than meets the eye. We’ll come back to this in a future post.
4. Build links through commenting on other blogs. Have you just read something interesting on another blog? Have something to add to what the author said? Write a brief comment and be sure to fill in the optional box on all web comment forms for your website address. Sometimes this box is labeled “URI.” Other times, it’s “URL” or simply “Website.” Don’t spam the blog with comments on every post. Don’t leave any variation of the “hey, come visit my site” comment and say something more intriguing than “hey, nice post.” Commenting on other blogs will draw some of their readers to your blog. It will also draw the attention of the other blog’s author, which can spark new opportunities for you.
5. Build links by asking your business partners, associates and vendors to link back to you.

Leave a comment on this post to get started on point #4 right now. There’s no time like the present, right?

Photo Credit: The Pug Father on flickr