SiteLeads.net

Lit up like a Christmas tree

I remember when I was a child, my family one year had a set of Christmas tree lights that operated in series. That is, when one bulb blew out, the whole set of lights went out. The electricity had to pass through each bulb before it went to the next bulb, like links in a chain. The operation of replacing a blown bulb was understandably challenging. You had to remove each bulb, replace it with a good one, then put back the original if it still didn't work. So, with a 100-bulb set, you might spend 10 minutes just working out which bulb had failed.

electric current running through three bulbs in series

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a bit like a set of in-series Christmas tree lights. You have to have all (or at least most) the bulbs working before the lights go on.

Let's focus on one of the biggest factors, and see how it depends on other factors.

Inbound links play a huge role in keeping your PageRank in shape. Why? Because if people are find your information interesting, they are more likely to create a link to it from their own blog, MySpace, FaceBook or wherever else they live on the Internet. Thus, search engines look favorably upon a growing and sizable list of inbound links.

Organic Inbound Link growth is dependent on traffic.

The problem is, how do people find your website in the first place, in order to create an inbound link to it?

Organic Inbound Link growth

Organic Inbound Link growth is when visitors are regularly adding Inbound Links to your website. Organic Inbound Link growth is totally dependent upon traffic. If only you had the traffic to build the Inbound Links to build the traffic! It's a bit of a Catch 22 situation; chicken or egg, if you prefer.

There are two things you have to do to get the Inbound Links growing of their own accord:

1. Manually create the first wave of Inbound Links. Think about several a week for about 6 months.
2. Make it extremely easy for people to bookmark / tag your web page.

For as long as you want more traffic to your website, manually creating inbound links is what you must engage in every day.

Manually creating Inbound Links: I will write a future blog entry for this. It deserves the focus of its own substantial posting.

Make it extremely easy: I recommend using an add-in like the one available on the AddThis website to make it easy for your website visitors to bookmark your site. All you have to do is add a few lines of HTML (supplied by AddThis) to any web page you'd like to have this feature on and the whole thing works like magic from there. In addition, the AddThis website reports on how many folks use it and where they link from.

As long as you want more traffic to your website, manually creating inbound links is what you must engage in several times a week.

...many Inbound Links take weeks to be picked up by search engines...

Note that many Inbound Links take weeks to be picked up by search engines. My rule-of-thumb is four to six weeks before the effect of Inbound Links can be measured. But don't be disheartened - keep creating new ones - and remember to make every posting on the web interesting, valuable to the reader, succinct and accurate.

Please post a comment!

Liam