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Hi again. :)

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again… I love Web Traffic. It’s a goooood thing.  And, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Specifically traffic from Google.

In fact, Google sends my websites a nice bit of traffic.  Here are my stats from last year for two of my niche websites. (Not this blog.  They are two of my other sites.)

This shows how many web visitors that Google sent to each site during 2009.

and

As you can see, Google sent each of these sites over 300,000 visitors. Like I said, web traffic is a goooood thing. :)

How on earth do I get Google (and Yahoo and Bing) to send me hundreds of thousands of web visitors each year? Simple. Marketing. Specifically link building… which we’ll talk about in just a minute.

Now, you guys know me well enough by now to know that I preach quality over quantity – and building a business that lasts the test of time. So, if you’re looking for automated, spammy link-building tips today, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

However, if you’d like to learn more about Link Building the right way, I’ve got some Link Building FAQs for you. I invited my good friend, Susanne Myers, here again to chat – and this time, I’ll add my thoughts, too.

And, as a reminder, Susanne teaches a course in Beginner Link Building if you’d like to learn more about this topic.

Just click here to get started -> Beginner Link Building Course

On to the Link Building FAQs…

First, What Is Link Building?

Susanne says: Link building is the process of creating (one way or another) links on other pages across the internet that point back to pages of your own websites.

Me: Link building is getting other websites to link to your website. For example, if you like this blog post, you are free to link to it from your blog. Talk about it in a blog post and link back to it. See how easy that is? :)

Why Is Link Building Important?
Susanne says: Links help other people and search engines find your site. In other words, links are one of the most important things to get traffic.

Me: Link building is important for two reasons.

  1. Sites like Google, Yahoo, and Bing look at how many other websites link to your site to determine how valuable and important your site is. So, for instance, a site like WebMD.com or CNN.com that is informative and is considered an authority site has tons and tons of incoming links to it. While you don’t have to compete with those sites, I use it as an example to show that valuable sites get linked to.
  2. The other main reason that link building is important is that having links on other websites gives you a much better chance at having people run across the links and click through them to your website. So, it’s not just about the search engines. It’s about placing links on sites where real people read the info and will click through to learn more about what you offer.

The combination of the two is extremely powerful. And, if you do it right, it’s unstoppable traffic.

How Many Links Do I Need To Get?
Susanne says: That really depends.

My goals for building links are always to:

  1. Get traffic directly from the link. (From people clicking on my link.)
  2. Move up in the search engines for my keyphrase for that particular page.

The more links and the higher quality the links you are building the better. For SEO purposes, keep building links until you are #1 on google for your search terms and for traffic, just take advantage of any and all link opportunities.

Me: It’s an ongoing process. I recommend that you do something “Marketing-related” every single day to get links to your website… forever.

What Are The Best Ways To Get Links?
Susanne says: I have two different ways of getting links. Some I actively create and others that are generated on auto pilot. Let me give you a few examples for each.

Active Link Building

  • Write and submit articles to article directories
  • Write and submit articles to quality sites in your niche
  • Write guest posts for popular blogs in your market place
  • Participate in forums in your niche linking back where applicable and in your forum signature line. (Make sure you comply with forum rules before posting any links).
  • Leave valuable blog comments on blogs in your niche.

Passive Link Building

  • Create a “Link To Me” Page that explains that it is ok to link to any page on your site and invites readers to grab links and buttons with simple copy and paste code that they can add to their own pages.
  • Add a Share This button to your blog. It will allow people to bookmark and email your link. There are several wordpress plugins out there that will do this and automate the process of using social bookmarking sites, twitter, facebook etc.
  • Write great content that people want to link to. Answer most commonly asked questions, create a list of resources, write a report or record a video. Create something of value and share it with your readers letting them know that it’s ok to link to this page.

Me: I love Susanne’s answer. The only things I’d recommend in addition are Video Marketing and doing a lot of interviews on other people’s sites — like this one. :)

Can I Just Buy Links?
Susanne says: Yes, you can, but it’s not a good idea. In the eyes of the search engines buying links on a site is cheating and they are constantly working on finding those links and punishing the sites that are involved in link buying schemes. In other words, if you value your site and your traffic, just don’t do it.

You can however outsource a lot of link building tasks. This basically means that you pay someone else to go out and post valuable comments on blogs, participate in forums or hire a writer to ghost write blog posts and articles for you.

Me: I’m with Susanne on this one. While there are shortcuts, I don’t recommend purchasing links, especially when marketing is FUN! (Well, if you’re geeky like me, it is.) :)

How Can I Learn More about Link Building?

Again – Susanne is the queen link builder. If you want to learn the basics of Link Building, again, here’s here course  -> Beginner Link Building Course

I hope this was helpful!

Please let us know if you have additional questions by commenting below. We’re happy to keep answering questions as long as you keep asking.

Have a great day!

Warmly,
Nicole