Build Your Site’s Link Value

by: Ken McGaffin

Link Value is the perceived value another site will derive from linking to you. The more value they see, the more likely they will be to link.

At its basic level, the most immediate value most sites see is a reciprocal link. “You link to me and I’ll link to you.” But such exchanges rarely bring significant business benefit to either party.

Much more productive are one-way links, “I’ll link to you because I think your site is useful and attractive to my audience.” Such links do not come easily and involve hard work and effort. But they can bring enormous returns in increased traffic, qualified prospects and sales revenue.

To persuade other sites to give you a one-way link you need to maximize your link value. The more value they see the more likely they are to link. To create value and compelling reasons for other sites to link to you, you’ve got to consider link value from three perspectives:

• The value you offer the linking website. Perhaps you offer complementary products or services: perhaps the information you publish may help them close a sale or perhaps they want to be seen as a knowledgeable source.
• The value that you offer their audience – the people that will follow the link to arrive at your website. They will be interested in what you have to offer and will already have expectations based on the link they followed. Will you be able to fulfill those expectations?
• The value that the additional traffic brings to your business. There’s no point in generating incoming links and traffic if you can’t convert the people who arrive at your site.

Sites that offer great link value

So how do you add link value to your site?

Here are four steps you can take to improve the link value of your site:

(i) Make sure that your site is customer-centric and tell people exactly what you do. Be clear, simple and direct and avoid “we are ...” corporate speak. This alone will make your website stand out from many of your competitors and thus make your site more attractive to link to.

(ii) Many websites underestimate the value of content they already have: this can often be re-purposed to increase your link value. Review the content that you already have both online and offline. Can you collate or re-package this into special reports or guides. A paint manufacturer for example could draw all its information on ‘External Decorating’ into a single guide. Such repackaging makes the best use of existing material and won’t cost a lot to do. The secret is to make reports address a specific customer need.

(iii) Create a range of fresh material that addresses customer needs in the form of articles, hints and tips, special reports. This material should be carefully aligned with your target audiences – you should have link worthy material for each of your important target markets.

(iv) Create attention-grabbing, interactive functions or microsites on the lines of the examples we gave earlier. To carry these off effectively takes a reasonable investment in time and money but the long-term rewards in increased profile and increased traffic to your site will be well worth it.

By understanding and building the link value of your site, you’ll find that the success rates of your linking requests will increase and that other sites will link to you without being asked.

That will really bring value to your business.