Get your link on

Before we talk about link building, try to get your head around infinity. I mean really try and imagine a universe without limits. It hurts doesn’t it? A new artistic impression of the Milky Way galaxy was released yesterday, approximating our own sun’s position in this 100,000-light-year-wide goliath. (One light year is about 9.5 trillion kilometres, you do the sums.) And the Milky Way is only the beginning – it’s a big and scary universe out there, and we’re only just confirming our own location, let alone who the neighbours are.

To the uninitiated (and, having just started here I place myself toward the “un” side of initiated), the Internet can be just as scary – a seemingly boundless conglomeration of information, entertainment, opinions, facts, sex, games, images, products. How can you possibly navigate this murky, protean beast? And how, as a website owner, can you make sure your potential customers find your site amidst the endless pages of competitors?

The theory’s simple (if the application isn’t): search engines. To state the obvious, the only way a surfer can view your site – whether new or established – is by typing your URL directly into their browser (maybe they’ve seen it on a billboard or TV), or by using a search engine to find your product or service. And the latter makes so much more sense for both consumers and website owners.

I’ve often found myself drawn into a billboard ad for, say, a travel deal from a new travel company. Then, by the time I’ve sat down at the computer, I’ve forgotten the company’s web address, and instead used Google to search for “travel deals to X.” And, like most web users, I’ve clicked through to one of the sites with the highest ranking results. Company A’s billboard has effectively bought revenue for Company B (and I don’t mean the guys who perform at Belvoir St – sorry, lame Sydney-centric joke).

The search engines are kind of like the top 40 charts – the number one song gets the most airtime and the most sales. MTV Google. So, how do you get your company’s site to the top of the pops? One important element is link building. Essentially, the more links to your site (especially from other highly ranked sites), the higher you rate on the charts. This has to do with the Page Rank system – for a crash course see below, or check out the Wikipedia entry (how good’s Wikipedia, btw!). There’s a whole debate around whether the most important thing is the value or the quantity of links, but we’ll leave that for another day. For now, how do you even get links?

There are a range of options available, but one of the best ways is to buy links from some kind of link broker or link buying agency. This can be extremely expensive – we know someone who spends about $US ½ million each month on links – but also very effective. $US ½ million sounds like a lot – and yeah, it’s probably more money than I’ll make in my working life – but if that pulls in $US ¾ million in business (and it can), then it seems like a pretty good idea to me.

And this is why link building is a growing at an exponential rate – people are realising that getting your site to the top of the major search engines’ rankings is a much more cost effective and efficient way to create business than traditional media forms of advertising.

So, as someone who is just discovering the exciting, sexy, exhilarating power of links (is it hot in here?), my advice is this: get your link on.