Increasing Backlinks to Increase Website Traffic

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts will tell you that one of the most important things you can do to increase website traffic and improve search engine listings is to increase the number of backlinks to your website.

What is a backlink? Backlinks are incoming links to a website. Backlinks are also one way that Google determines PageRank in order to assess the popularity of a website. (Did you know Page is actually the name of Larry Page, the inventor of the ranking algorithm?)

Wondering how your website ranks and how many backlinks there are to it? Click here for a nice backlink checker that also provides a ton of other info.

So how can you boost backlinks?

1. Exchange links to your website with others. List them on your links page in exchange for them linking to you. If you’ve got a book/author/writing related website to share, leave a comment with it and I’ll add you if you’ll add me!

2. Article submissions. Writing articles in your area of expertise or about topics of interest are a great way to create backlinks. E-zine Articles is a great way to do this. You can check out some of my articles by clicking here.

3. Social sites (Facebook, Twitter and Myspace) and social bookmarking are also great ways to create backlinks and it doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Applications like Hootsuite and sites like Ping.fm allow you to propogate multiple sites. Make sure to bookmark important pages on your site to Digg, Delicious and Stumbleupon, but also remember that “social” bookmarking is about being “social”. Share fun and interesting links as well via these sites.

4. Video submission sites are another manner in which to generate backlinks to your site and your uploaded videos.

5. Get listed at the various search directories like dmoz.org, Alexa, Google, Bing and Yahoo. This will assist in making sure that these search engines spider your site. This will help boost where you appear in their listings.

6. Guest blogs and comments on blogs also help create backlinks to your site. While every blog/website has a different method for leaving comments, try to use choose the method that allows you to leave your name and URL.

I will leave you with those tips for now, but I also invite you to drop by later today and visit with me at the Carina Press blog where I will be chatting about AZTEC GOLD and what inspired the story, including my own personal fear which influenced the herione’s character.

Promoting Yourself Using Social Bookmarking

If you’re a published author and you want to learn about how to promote your book, I highly recommend that you sign up for the Author and Marketing Experts newsletter. The newsletter is chock full of tips and tricks for how to publicize your book. You can also check out their free online courses and podcasts at Publishing Insiders.

One of the tips in a recent newsletter was about social bookmarking and you can also click here to read an article on maximizing book reviews by using social bookmarking.

Of course by now some of you may be wondering, “What the heck is social bookmarking?”

Social bookmarking lets you share your favorite websites, pages, etc. with others. Sites such as Delicious, Digg and Stumbleupon are just some of the sites which store your bookmarks and share them with others.

If you’ve got the Google Toolbar, you can also post your content to Blogger, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Yahoo and a number of other services with just the click of a button.

What can you share? Articles or blogs that you’ve written, reviews for your books, videos, contests and basically anything that you have online and that you want to share.

These bookmarks are great tools for having people discover you and your work and will help drive people to your website.

You can also make it easy for others to share information you’ve created by using buttons such as these in your posts and on your website! You can get this simple social bookmark widget at Addthis.com.


Bookmark and Share

I hope you enjoyed today’s Tuesday Tip.

Also, many thanks for all your help last Tuesday when I asked for suggestions for some upcoming contest. The lucky winner of the Valere! Please e-mail me your postal address so I can send your prize.