Establishing one-way links to your business Web site or blog is an effective way to increase the amount of traffic from your targeted market group. When a one-way link to your site is set up, your site or blog can be easily accessed through a link in another Web site or blog. There are several ways to secure a one-way link, and your choice will depend on your business and target clients or audience.
Online Directories
Your Web site link can be listed in one of the available Web directories. Sites are listed according to their category for easier reference. DMOZ is one of the most popular Web directories, but it can take up to eighteen months for a new link entry to be listed.
Yahoo also offers a Web directory used by a large number of people. Take the time to research any Web directory that you are considering for your listing and make sure that it is a legitimate and trusted directory.
A listing in a directory that will list any Web site may degrade your business’s reputation. Look at all the available categories within the directory and choose the category that most closely describes your business. This will increase the chances of your intended customer base finding your link.
Article Directories
Whenever you submit an article to a newsletter or e-zine, enter a post on a blog, or enter comments to a forum discussion, include your Web site address at the end. This will give you an automatic one-way link to your site.
Narrow down your choices for article and comment submissions to reputable sites that will likely be of interest to your specific and targeted market group. This way, you will be reaching potential customers that may already have an interest in products and services similar to what you can offer.
Resist the temptation to put your name and Web site link on every possible site. This will not give you the results you are looking for, which is reaching the portion of the population that will be sincerely interested in what your business can do for them.
Keep in mind that search engines analyze the quality of links to Web sites, and your search engine rating will suffer if you have an abundance of one-way links or one-way links from sites of poor quality. It is far better to establish a one-way link with a few well-established, high-quality sites than a large number of run-of-the-mill sites.
