Building Links to a New Site
My father in law started a site to support his business and called me up to discuss. His first idea was to submit to directories and exchange links...
and that's
where he
became a bug
on the Internet Highway
Splat!
and hit a windshield.
Welcome to the Internet... now move aside
Hitting the windshield is not uncommon but you don't have to end up there. I then explained several ways (in more detail) how to build links to a new site and start attracting more business. It's easy to think of attracting links to a brand new site as similar to running a marathon with shoelaces untied. It's tempting to believe the task is best undertaken with a mature domain with fully indexed content that's been live for years. However your new endeavor can overtake more established sites if you move ahead with the following ideas in mind.
Unleash your new site's inner superstar
An older site can suffer from a certain amount of inflexibility. A new site has no such hindrances. This is your advantage, make good use of it. A new site is a clean slate and an opportunity to do it right, and along the way outshine older established sites. The advantage of a new site is that you can do many things that an older site cannot or simply will not.
1. Competitive intelligence
Research the top sites in the niche you want to occupy. These aren't necessarily the top ten, but top sites across a range of relevant keyword phrases. Make a set of lists and note their strengths, what they do right, as well as what you feel they don't do well or not at all. This can present opportunities for an approach to help overtake your competition.
For instance, in planning a new forum I noticed that the gorilla owning the space was plagued by rudeness, poor moderation, and not well optimized. Yes it had been around for almost ten years, and yes it ranked for a gazillion phrases. However my opportunity was to engage a handful of experts and mount a new forum whose strength, among other things, consisted of doing better where the competition was weak. That was the benefit I offered to site visitors who were faced with a choice between my site and King Kong. Years later it's quite successful, and we are a strong second to Kong in that space, while leaving others far behind.
2. Plan your site architecture
Planning how many sections you will attempt and leaving room for expansion is important because the more topics you have the more useful and comprehensive it is. As far as attracting links, this gives you an opportunity to appeal to a wider source of one-way inbound links.
and that's
where he
became a bug
on the Internet Highway
Splat!
and hit a windshield.
Welcome to the Internet... now move aside
Hitting the windshield is not uncommon but you don't have to end up there. I then explained several ways (in more detail) how to build links to a new site and start attracting more business. It's easy to think of attracting links to a brand new site as similar to running a marathon with shoelaces untied. It's tempting to believe the task is best undertaken with a mature domain with fully indexed content that's been live for years. However your new endeavor can overtake more established sites if you move ahead with the following ideas in mind.
Unleash your new site's inner superstar
An older site can suffer from a certain amount of inflexibility. A new site has no such hindrances. This is your advantage, make good use of it. A new site is a clean slate and an opportunity to do it right, and along the way outshine older established sites. The advantage of a new site is that you can do many things that an older site cannot or simply will not.
1. Competitive intelligence
Research the top sites in the niche you want to occupy. These aren't necessarily the top ten, but top sites across a range of relevant keyword phrases. Make a set of lists and note their strengths, what they do right, as well as what you feel they don't do well or not at all. This can present opportunities for an approach to help overtake your competition.
For instance, in planning a new forum I noticed that the gorilla owning the space was plagued by rudeness, poor moderation, and not well optimized. Yes it had been around for almost ten years, and yes it ranked for a gazillion phrases. However my opportunity was to engage a handful of experts and mount a new forum whose strength, among other things, consisted of doing better where the competition was weak. That was the benefit I offered to site visitors who were faced with a choice between my site and King Kong. Years later it's quite successful, and we are a strong second to Kong in that space, while leaving others far behind.
2. Plan your site architecture
Planning how many sections you will attempt and leaving room for expansion is important because the more topics you have the more useful and comprehensive it is. As far as attracting links, this gives you an opportunity to appeal to a wider source of one-way inbound links.
You may want to consider designing your navigation along the left or right side as this provides more space for expanding into new areas. Give each topic/section of your site a meaningful name, preferably (in my opinion) one word to two words.
One of the best examples of site architecture I recall is the one used by Red Herring magazine circa 2002. Check it out on archive.org. It's not perfect, but what I admire is, starting with the navigation on the left side you can click through to a hub that shows the latest articles, plus a link to their archive. You can conceivably list a hundred articles in that first section, although for the sake of usability and usefulness you may want to limit that to the latest articles for the month. Link to the rest within the archive the way Red Herring did it. Someone who is thinking of linking to your site will appreciate this approach because it handily displays the breadth of your site, making it easy to impress them with how link-worthy it is.
Choose a decent domain
You can choose a domain with a keyword in it but likely those aren't available so don't sweat it, it's not that important. Really. Try something memorable that says something about the value your site brings to the user, something that will make them click if they see it in the search engine results page. I like a good brandable domain name that is memorable, but more importantly, one that will cause a user to click on it if they see it ranking well for the keyword they are using. For example, what site would you rather visit: CountryFarmsOrganic.com or MyOrganic4U.com? CountryFarmsOrganic is long, but it brands itself as wholesome, a concept compatible with organic produce. Wholesomeness and health is the benefit this particular user is looking for and the domain confers. And at the time of writing, that domain was available. Woo-hoo!
Avoiding the "screw you" response.
Your site has a hyphen in it? You're shooting yourself in the foot in terms of obtaining solid inbounds. In my opinion you look like a spammer. Lose it. Think how that domain is going to look in the editors dashboard at DMOZ. I can see the editor hitting the EJECT button so fast she's knocking over her latte. For even more fun, the hyphen may impress some web surfers as a spam site and cause them to skip over it in the SERPs. However the most important reason to skip the hyphenated domain is that a webmaster may take a look at your domain and say "Screw you!" as she hits the delete button on your one-way link request. Ouch, that's no fun.
Inspiring the look of love
Add a groovy site design that is in synch with your industry. Think of conveying authority. If it's fashion then probably something that is evocative of style. If it's business, then think of the top company in that niche and see how they're conveying their authority. The professional appearance of your website is going to work the hardest in your favor when you are obtaining one way inbound links. Even a drop ship site with a great domain and a clean and cool design can get into DMOZ (I speak from personal experience).
Choose a decent domain
You can choose a domain with a keyword in it but likely those aren't available so don't sweat it, it's not that important. Really. Try something memorable that says something about the value your site brings to the user, something that will make them click if they see it in the search engine results page. I like a good brandable domain name that is memorable, but more importantly, one that will cause a user to click on it if they see it ranking well for the keyword they are using. For example, what site would you rather visit: CountryFarmsOrganic.com or MyOrganic4U.com? CountryFarmsOrganic is long, but it brands itself as wholesome, a concept compatible with organic produce. Wholesomeness and health is the benefit this particular user is looking for and the domain confers. And at the time of writing, that domain was available. Woo-hoo!
Avoiding the "screw you" response.
Your site has a hyphen in it? You're shooting yourself in the foot in terms of obtaining solid inbounds. In my opinion you look like a spammer. Lose it. Think how that domain is going to look in the editors dashboard at DMOZ. I can see the editor hitting the EJECT button so fast she's knocking over her latte. For even more fun, the hyphen may impress some web surfers as a spam site and cause them to skip over it in the SERPs. However the most important reason to skip the hyphenated domain is that a webmaster may take a look at your domain and say "Screw you!" as she hits the delete button on your one-way link request. Ouch, that's no fun.
Inspiring the look of love
Add a groovy site design that is in synch with your industry. Think of conveying authority. If it's fashion then probably something that is evocative of style. If it's business, then think of the top company in that niche and see how they're conveying their authority. The professional appearance of your website is going to work the hardest in your favor when you are obtaining one way inbound links. Even a drop ship site with a great domain and a clean and cool design can get into DMOZ (I speak from personal experience).
A good site design helps a lot for obtaining one-way inbound links from trusted and authoritative websites. I cannot stress enough how a spiffy design will make people loosey-goosey with their links. Site managers in charge of adding links react positively to a good looking website.
Search Engine Commentary by martinibuster || Building Links to a New Site
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