Most people already know that getting inbound links is one of the most important aspects of generating traffic to your site. Obtaining links from sites outside of your own will not only generate traffic for you, but it will also spread your site and your name around the field that you are targeting, and it will garner the attention of search engines.
There are three main ways to generate traffic to your site with the use of links, and these will be discussed below.
The first kind of traffic that links can get for your site is direct traffic. Simply put, this is traffic from people who click on links on other sites that direct them to your site. Some estimates indicate that 21% of total Internet traffic comes from direct traffic through these kinds of links. These links should be placed on sites that are not direct competition to yours, but ones that have the same target audience.
There are a number of reasons people click on these links. One is that they assume that the webmaster has placed your link on their site as a helpful or interesting resource that is related to the content on the site. Another simple reason is that people are curious, so when they see text links on a site with interesting wording, they cannot help but to check it out.
Both of the above reasons lead us to three important points about your links. Firstly, you should try your best to get as many links as possible on sites that your target users will be likely to visit. Second, your anchor text (the actual words that link to your site) should be interesting. Third, be sure that your links are on pages that people will actually see.
The second type of traffic on the board is traffic that comes from search engines. Many search engines, including Google, take into account the quality and quantity of inbound links your site has when they attempt to rank your site for certain keywords. So, when you have a sufficient amount of quality inbound links, your site will be more likely to appear closer to the top of the search results pages, which means that your site will be more likely to be visited by a person searching for a site related to the keyword they have searched.
The third and last type of traffic that will be discussed in this article is traffic from articles. This is done by embedding links to your site within well-written articles, which may be viewed on hundreds of sites. Each view that the article gets is another opportunity for a possible click on a link that will lead the reader to your site. Also, if a reader is reading an article that includes an inbound link to your site, chances are they are interested in the subject matter of the article, which makes them even more likely to click on your link.
With article links, it is important to note that where your article is published is significant. For example, if your product is “sports” related, then having the article published on a sports site is more helpful than publishing it on a more general site. Results may be helped even more if you get even more specific. Instead of just stopping at sports, if your article is on the topic of the NBA, then getting that article published on sites that are concerned directly with the NBA will have more bearing on both the number of clicks your link will get as well as on search engines.
Another key point with placing embedded links in articles is that the anchor text should contain at least one of your keywords, and not just the URL or Web address. This means that to search engines, your site will be more related to the specific search keywords or phrases.
Source:
http://www.sitepronews.com/
archives/2006/feb/17.html
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