Are you wasting your time asking for link swaps?

Oct 11, 2010

I regularly come across people on forums asking to swap links to improve their SEO for their website. This is a extremely ineffective way of generating traffic to your website. I answered one of these forum posts, helping someone generate traffic for their new children’s sport equipment e-commerce website. Although this is a ecommerce site, the same rules are true whether you sell a service or a product. I’ve reproduced my answer in this blog post…

I presume you are looking to build links because you want to improve your search engine ranking for your site, and generate traffic for your site.

Firstly, good search engine rankings take time to achieve – and you are right, back links do help. However, back links only help if:

1) you are linking to a site with a better google ranking than you (and preferably has similar content to you)

Therefore, asking for back links on a site like this feels good, because you are helping out other people and taking action – but rarely is effective. Sorry, but here is how you can rapidly generate traffic to your site and sustain it in the long term.

My advice is as follows:

1) sort out your meta tags on your home page (and site as a whole) – at the moment you’ve crammed your metatags keywords with everything you can think of, for both your home page and other product pages. This is not effective, and the description metatag is empty on your home page.

Take your home page first:

Firstly, decide on what keywords you are going to compete for – use this free tool – https://adwords.google.com For example, you would be far better off competing for kids fitness rather than kids sports equipment. Why? Kids fitness has a low level of competition but 33 100 monthly seaches, and kids sports equipment has a high level of competition for only 720 searches.

Choose five or six keywords for your home page. Make sure these phrases are included in your title and description metatags and within your text.

This site has lots of lovely free SEO tools – http://rapid.searchmetrics.com/en/tools/

Then you need to repeat for each page in your site. Yes, each page. So, for example, for your Kwik cricket bat. Your description is spot on – but no title metatag. Plus your keywords metatag is stuffed full of irrelevent things. What do people actually search for when they want to buy a kids cricket bat? Cut the number of keywords in your metatag down to about five or six.

This research and subsequent changes to your site is going to take probably a day of your time, but is essential if you are going to achieve higher search engine rankings.

2) Generate back links via effective methods

Note the ‘effective’ methods. Find out where your target audience hands out on line. Tola was right, think mumsnet etc. Find a maximum of three of these sites, join as a member and fill out your profile – include links back to your home page. If the site lets you fill out a signature for your profile, include links back to your home page.

Now, remember the keywords you chose to compete for your homepage. You want to make sure that you include these keywords, but hyperlink them back to your homepage. For example, if you chose kids fitness. You would write – want to help increase your kids fitness?

Here’s the bit where most people fall down. You now need to become an active member of these sites. Aim to be on each of these sites at least once a day, and posting up some useful advice about kids fitness, or being helpful and joining in the conversation. You are not there to sell. You are there to develop a presence and profile. This will generate traffic back to your website, both via all the new backlinks you are creating each time you post, but also from being helpful – people will go and look at your website.

3) Use social media to generate traffic (and improve your SEO at the same time)

Twitter, used in conjunction with a blog, is another great way of creating links back to your site. I notice you don’t have a blog. This is where you talk about everything to do with helping kids get fit and healthy, and how to help them enjoy sports & the different kinds of sports they can do… This is not about you selling your sports equipment, but writing valuable content for mother’s who want to help their kid be fit and healthy.

On twitter link back to these blog posts & allow yourself, one tweet to a special offer on your site a day. No more – you don’t have enough of a track record to get away with more. On twitter, tweet about your day, your family, what you are doing with your business, and tips for parents wanting to help their kids be fitter and healthier.

A facebook fan page which is updated a couple of times a day with your business news & special offers, photos of your products being used in action (encourage people to post them), exercise and healthy eating tips for parents, links to articles about healthy eating and exercise for kids, plus tipbits about what you and the business are getting up to… will be a fantastic asset for your business. Done well, your facebook business fanpage should be your best route to market.

Any way, I hope that this helps:

These articles will help you some more:

My idiots guide to improving your search engine ranking

How to use your blog for good SEO

I recommend you read this book – Inbound marketing – get found using google, social media and blogs