How to Get Links to Your Website

 This appears to be the turf of Internet experts and online business gurus. It is highly technical too. One must therefore be very careful taking on this subject because it is still subject of intense debates among many marketers. My own opinion is based solely on what I have learned over time from the limited information I have managed to come across on the subject. To get links to your website, first you must have a website properly so called. That is a given! The site must be interesting, easily accessible/navigable and enjoyable. It must be worthy of links enabling people to find it easily. Links to your site act exactly like Internet pathways directing and leading Internet users through the Internet’s “electronic jungle” to your site. Knowing what the Internet is, that can not by any approach be an easy task. But, it is doable and is being done by many marketers who know their ways around the Internet.


 
To get links to your site, you must be on the Internet and must be found easily in it. You must depend more on Internet Search Engines to bring you out for others to find. Therefore, you must explore and exploit ways to get these Search Engines to “like” your website. The best place to have links to your site is on the most popular search engines particularly Google. These Search Engines are very smart, finicky and efficient and are very good in what they do. To get them to like and be friendly to your site, you must routinely do what they like and tolerate in the management of your own website. That is your very first hurdle. They do not hesitate to penalize any site that goes against their rules of engagement. That is one warning signal you can’t afford to ignore.

Why do you really need links? Great question! Traditionally, the more links you have to your website, the better the site is in the “eyes” of Search Engines. For that reason, the Engines tend to direct more traffic to such sites. Every smart marketer always wants traffic, traffic and more traffic. The more of it you get, the better for your business! Years past, it used to be more fashionable to simply ask other sites for links. But, when Search Engines started dishing out penalties for what later became popularly known as “poor links,” most marketers went back to the drawing board. Now, reciprocal link exchanges are the in thing. Nobody now forces any links on anyone. It remains your decision which links to accept or decline so as to play safe with Search Engines. 

In the very early days of the Internet, people approached all incoming links through “asking and permission.” But, as the Internet expanded and became more sophisticated, it is becoming more difficult to get links to your site just by asking. You must have something good to offer now to get something in return. Welcome to “reciprocal link exchanges.” If you run a poor website, you can hardly get reciprocal links from a good site. The real reason, you must ensure at all times that your website is up to scratch otherwise you can’t hope to take good advantage of this very complicated Internet engagement.

 

Advertising by Word of Mouth

 Advertising by word of mouth may sound old fashioned but it is still very potent, efficient and effective. There is research evidence supporting the fact that at 21 years of age, the average young person already knows at least 800 people very closely. The numbers can be staggering when you factor in that most of these people will be youths who each also knows other 800 people very closely. Just get out a word into such a group and you will be amazed how far and how fast such word will travel within the loose network. That is the power of word of mouth particularly in advertising. 


 
Unarguably, one of the most viable alternatives to the traditional established media outlets, that is, television, radio, newspapers and others for disseminating information is word of mouth. This is because word of mouth retains the capacity to spread information cheaply to a huge number of people in a short period of time. Before the advent of modern media outlets like newspapers, radio, television, or even the Internet, word of mouth was the only viable way to spread information effectively and efficiently to a very large audience within a short period of time. It is still that effective even at the moment.

Word of mouth is cheap, effective and it comes very naturally to most humans. Over the ages, human beings have relied more upon word of mouth to convey and preserve information than any other form of propagation. It simply comes naturally for most people. Because modern media outlets exist to make a profit for their owners, they have no choice but to charge for advertising. This at times amounts to very huge costs which most marketers can ill afford. Keeping down costs is one smart way marketers rely on to increase their profits. The main reason why word of mouth is still around with us and still helping us out in our daily lives and businesses!

If you are in business, there is no doubt you’ve heard someone say: “pass the word on fella!” That is word of mouth in information propagation. Marketers have since found out that it is historically true that for news to spread by word of mouth, it must be newsworthy. “Have you heard?” is one common phrase everyday people use everywhere they interact with themselves and others. Traditionally, the human being is a social animal and it is part of his life to habitually interact with others. That is what helps to spread word of mouth information cheaply, quickly and very widely. If you’ve ever been the subject and the butt of gossip, you’ll get to appreciate what I am driving at. The newsworthiness of any event directly controls how fast and how far it is spread. Good news or bad news, people always want to hear it particularly when it is coming from people they know and routinely interact with. That helps the spread more than any other form of pecuniary considerations including financial.