1. Links! Links! Links!
- First, use a backlink search tool to do your research. Find out who is linking to you and what kind of anchor text they are using.
- Next, hire a provider to compile and organize a list of sites your competitors are linked to. Have the provider find the contact information for those sites.
- Finally, find a provider knowledgeable in SEO who can pitch your site to the owners of your competitor's sites. SEO Moz, a blog on all things SEO has a great post on link building (beware of spamming, though...nobody likes that).
2. Blog Away.
Write content that is interesting, controversial, or funny and people will link to you. Not the best writer? Find a freelance blogger that you like that writes about your industry and link to them. Most bloggers religiously check their backlinks, so they'll link to you too if they like your site or product.
3. Make Your Anchor Text Relevant.
Are you missing valuable keywords on your pages? Do you have a lot of "click here" and "learn more" links on your site? Hire a copywriter to get rid of them and include anchor text that is relevant and descriptive about your company and product.
4. Do Some On-Site Cleanup.
Crawlers read text only, so make sure your text is positioned properly on the page so that it is easily read by users and crawlers. Use Semantic HTML and CSS to make sure crawlers have no problems finding the right content.
These 4 steps are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO, so here are some resources for further learning: Google Secrets SEO Moz SEO for Firefox Matt Cutt's Blog (Google software engineer who works on search)
If this all seems a little overwhelming to you, or you don't have time for SEO, there are SEO consultants on oDesk who can help you with many of these strategies.
Contributor: Daryl writes/blogs for oDesk, the marketplace for online workteams. oDesk offers the best business model for both buyers and providers with a unique approach that guarantees that an hour paid is an hour worked, while also guaranteeing that an hour worked is an hour paid.
