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Most Internet retailers will have some interest in optimising their website for the search engines. For all the paid links, affiliate links and third party sales channels there is nothing quite like sales from traffic that has cost you nothing. A good presence in the natural rankings of the major search engines can breath life into your ecommerce business. While many small Internet businesses will pay an SEO expert to optimise their site there are still plenty who do it themselves. To be fair, it is very possible to achieve very good rankings for your site on your own without the expensive help of an expert, especially if you are in a niche market or cottage industry.

For most who scratch the surface of SEO one of the first things they learn is that inbound links are considered my most to be the lifeblood of a good SEO campaign. The answer of how to go about getting the ranking is there, staring you in the face, it all seems so easy. But the hard work and head scratching begins when you start trying to build links to your site. People talk about high quality links, good links, bad links, pointless links. To the newby SEO it can all seem confusing. I like to look at links like a diet, you need a good variety, nothing in excess, as rich and varied as possible and without overdoing it on one particular food type.

A link building expert I know, Michiel Van Kets has a great way of describing a link building campaign in his email signature which sums things up nicely.

“When it comes to link building, you shouldn’t ask yourself which tactic is the best one; they all have their advantages and disadvantages; in other words; you need all kind of links -> mix them up !”

Below is a list of methods I have used in order to improve the SEO of our main online retail website. I am no authority on SEO and can in no way be considered an expert. The list is just a selection of the methods I have used myself to good effect.

Directory submissions

Directory submissions are where many junior webmasters begin their campaign. There are 1000s of directories on the web, most of which will accept a submission of your site to possibly be included in the directory. The format usually follows an online form and category selection where you need to put details such as the url, your email address and details about the site you are submitting. Many directories are free, other have a small charge. Indeed many start off life as free directories and then once established become paid ones.

Directory links are not considered to be particularly valuable, so many believe the best way to make them work for you is to submit to 100s of them. The thinking goes that if a directory link is worth a tiny tiny amount, then 100s of directory listings will help you site. One problem with this is the time it takes to firstly locate the directories, sort the wheat from the chaff, then submit to each one. If like me you feel like you might fall into a coma out of boredom at the sight of an online form you might want to consider paying someone else to do it for you.

Companies exist who have lists of good free directories and will submit your site manually to 100s of them for a fee. Often based in third word countries with English speaking staff they sometimes have very good rates. Beware the con merchants as they are plentiful, get yourself onto a good SEO forum and seek referrals from established members. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a decent company to undertake your directory submissions.

Begging for a link

This technique is one that has been forgotten by many SEOs and web masters mainly due to it’s low success rate. You see a relevant, not competing website that has good page rank and ranks well in Google. You email the webmaster and ask them if they might consider adding a link on their site to yours. It all seems so simple and easy, however the usual response to this is a stone wall, silence, maybe even a dash of apathy.

It can be extremely frustrating, there certainly does seem to be a degree of apathy from those webmasters of information based community websites when asked by a purely  commercial website for a link, some selfless help. The usual response is seems to bear the sentiment ‘Why should I help you make money?’

Despite all of this it is possible to get some inbound links in this way, We currently work on a ration of 1/10. Yes, for every ten webmasters we email approximately one will be kind and give us a link on their relevant, content rich page. For those links, it’s worth the other 9 rejections!

Creating your own non commercial content

This method may seem a bit long winded but stay with me. Most SEOs will agree that inbound links from rich, relevant content sites, that have respectable page rank are the gems that make the difference. You can surf the web and most likely find a good number of information or community based websites that are packed full with rich, relevant content and rank well in the search engines. Often emailing the webmasters of these sites to ask for a link is completely useless, they simply ignore your request. Why after all would they want to help YOU make money.

There is a more roundabout way you can get links on these sorts of pages. You create your own websites, information or community based sites that on the face of it have no commercial motive. You can set up a totally separate website, or a simple blog. Using the word press bog software can have pretty much anyone up and running with their own web content within a few short hours. What is good about creating these sites is that gaining inbound links for them is much easier than getting links to your ecommerce website.

There is a community based site that we contacted recently to ask for a link to our web shop, the request and all it’s polite follow ups went ignored! So we then set up two new sites, completely non commercial, and requested links from the same webmaster. Hey presto! He gave us the links. Of course we then add links in our own non commercial sites and blogs to our site, so getting some link juice from him in the end!

Blog Commenting

There is plenty of debate among SEOs about the value of inbound links from blog comments. Most blogs will allow comments to be left under each post. As part of the commenting process there is the opportunity to leave your URL for a link back. Blog commenting has been embraced by the spamming community of prescription drug sales and other similar sites. It’s therefore normal for the webmaster of a blog to be inundated with spam comments.

Newer versions of the popular blogging software such as word press have in built anti spam measures to try to weed out the spam comments. I guess it could be argued that you would be spamming a blog if the sole purpose of the comment is to gain an inbound link. It might be tempting to add comments such as ‘Great post, thanks for the info’ or ‘Thanks for the great content’ but without something interesting to say it’s likely your comment will be rejected or put into the ’spam’ bin.

If you intend to search for blogs relevant to your content and comment on them with your url make sure you read the blog post properly, and leave a sensible intelligent comment that will be an asset to the debated subject. Use google alerts to get daily notifications of new relevant blog posts and comment on the blogs, they can be good sources of traffic as well as inbound links.

There is one fly that flutters and squirms in the ointment that is blog commenting and that’s the ‘no follow’ tag that an increasing number of bloggers add to the comments. No follow is an html tag created by google that a webmaster can add to a link. The idea is that google wont recognise the link for the purposes of ranking making it, in some peoples eyes, a worthless link. Annoyingly for SEOs word press (the most popular blogging software) now inserts the no follow tag as a default, so most bloggers wont even be aware they are doing it! Finding blogs without ‘no follow’ tags can be a challenge. However it’s worth remembering that adding the comments will have numerous other benefits. It will alert the blogger to your existence, generate some traffic, and who knows, may gain you some other links naturally from those that see and manually follow the url in the comment.

Buying Links

Buying links from other webmasters is a subject surrounded in controversy. Google takes a dim view on paid links as it sees them as patent attempts to manipulate their search results. It might seem simple to email a webmaster in the begging sort of way, but offer them a small cash incentive. I have always avoided the paid links game, mainly through paranoia. There is no doubt that it still goes on but those that get caught out can risk having their sites completely removed from the index. It’s worth remembering that in competitive industries there will be someone out there who wants to bring your rankings down. Don’t give them any help in doing this, stay clean, avoid paid links.

Community web space sites

There are plenty of sites out there that will let you create your own content, one such example being squidoo. This site allows anyone to create a free page, they call it a lens, and add their own content to it. Many SEOs will create relevant squidoo pages and then add in text links to their main site. Squidoo is completely general, you can set up a lens about almost anything. There are also niche websites, community forums etc etc that will let you set up your own profile page or blog. Find the community sites that relate to your industry and set up a profile, add a picture library and start a blog on there. Keep the outbound links to your site to a sensible number and try to be an active member of the community. Moderators will suspend your account if they feel you are only using it for inbound links.

Forums

Web forums are now commonplace, It’s hard to find a subject that doesn’t have it’s own web forum. From cars, specific models of cars and right through to health and well being, there is a forum for everything. Many forums have grown into huge communities and have 1000s of active members. Registering on a forum allows you to post content, which can include links. Most forums allow you a permanent signature that can contain a link and accompanies each post you make. As an online retailer you should be looking to forums for advice on business issues, e marketing and other matters relating to your business. Always make sure you post your link in your signature. Don’t spam the forums, most are heavily moderated and if they feel you are using it just for links it will be bye bye! As with all things web, keep it natural, if you cant, make it look natural.

Article writing and submission

Writing articles and publishing them online is another tool in the SEOs armoury. The web hosts a number of article sites where you can submit your own articles. I could, if I wanted, submit this blog post as an article. To do so I need to register with the article sites and submit it for consideration. If approved they will publish it on their site. You can then submit to other article sites and hope it gets published on each one. If the site allows you to add links within the body text (which not all of them do) you can also benefit hugely if a webmaster uses your article on his high PR site. So it can be a bit mit and miss, you might submit the article and get nothing more than the links dirctly from the article site, or if it gets syndicated you could land yourself some great links. The secret is of course to write great articles!

For those with limited time or poor writing skills you can sub contract this out to link building companies, some of who will have well educated english speaking writers who will generate some good articles for you. They will also be more clued up on the submission process and therefore more likely to get the article pass the approval stage.

Have an amazingly good website

The last method we have used for link building is to put as much effort as we can into our website, how it looks, works and performs. If you are trying to retail online this should be a priority regardless of SEO. Having a brilliant website, with good content can land you the best links of all, the natural ones. Whereby webmasters genuinely feel that their site users will want to see your site so add a link without being asked. This can also be born out of selling good products and offering excellent service. Your customers will tell others about you and one medium of communication they will use will be the Internet. When we check out inbound links we sometimes see links on forums from customers recommending us to other forum members, and occasionally we get a glowing review on a customers blog telling the world how much they enjoyed dealing with us.

If you feel I have missed out any other practical link building methods please feel free to comment and make suggestions.