Inbound links are a vital part of your brand’s online marketing campaign. They help generate traffic from other websites and help leverage your website rankings with search engines.

How Do I get Inbound Links to My Website?

You can hire an SEO company to create, carry out, and support an inbound link campaign for you. You can also create your own campaign on your own or in conjunction to your SEO or online marketing company.

As you start your campaign, keep in mind that some websites will require reciprocal links. Others may want to charge you, which is okay if they are a reputable site . Allocate this charge to your advertising budget.

There are plenty of sources that will give you free, non-reciprocal links, including:

• Online business directories
• Map websites
• Colleagues
• Clients
• Affiliates and Partners
• Trade associations
• Membership organizations
• Award websites
• Article and ezine websites
• Blogs (via guest posts and commenting)

How to Create a Simple Inbound Link Campaign

The focus of an inbound link campaign is to generate lots of high quality links to your website. As a beginner, aiming for 50 through email requests or hand-submitted through websites is a good goal. Remember, the more links from valid websites with high Google page rank the better.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Conduct a keyword search – start by researching the keywords you want to rank for in Google to find your top three competitors for those results and who is linking to those sites to get a list of potential targets. Alexa.com is a valuable resource for this, as well as determining the strength of your own website.
2. Research link sources – once you’ve determined who is linking to your competition, visit the sites and qualify them to make sure they are relevant to your industry and are high quality websites.
3. Create a spreadsheet – track your targeted websites for inbound links by creating a simple spreadsheet that includes the site name, the site URL, the submission URL or email address, date you submitted, the URL for your website page that you requested to be linked to, if you provided a reciprocal link, date that you checked for the link.
4. Submit link requests – for the sites that allow you to submit your request through an online form, follow the directions provided on the site. Some sites will only want your website URL, others may want more information such as a description, keywords, contact information, etc.
5. Email link requests – for sites that do not offer online forms, find their email address and send an email request. If you are willing to offer reciprocal links to their website, be sure to let them know. Respond promptly to any response emails and requests you receive from the site owners.
6. Follow up – after six weeks, check to see which links have posted. If you find that some have not followed through as promised, gently follow-up with a reminder.

Creating a personal brand that attracts ideal clients means getting the word out about you and your expertise. An inbound link campaign is just one step you can actively take to make your website search engine friendly.

Keep the conversation flowing… have you implemented a link campaign and if so, did it help you?

For more tips and insights on creating your brand, check out our personal branding workshops and free downloads.