A guide on backlinking for small businesses.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, in 2010 there were 27.9 million small businesses in the country. Additionally, the Administration reports that about half of all new small businesses survive five years or more and about one-third survive 10 years or more. The competition in this sector is though and every single strategy that can help you improve your business chance of survival is worth a try.
One of those key strategies is building a strong online presence. However, once you have established a website, a follow-up strategy is to improve your sites equity in search engines. To achieve this you will need backlinks to your site. Inbound links to to your site will help search engines index your pages, allow people surfing the Internet find your site, and increase your sites equity in the eyes of both those visitors and search engines.
In this article I will provide a guide on how to approach backlinking to increase the traffic to your small business site.
Backlinking Basics
Back linking is a project, which requires proper planning and lots of time. This is a strategy that requires plenty of patience and constant work. Concentrate more on quality rather than quantity.
If your budget allows you to hire the services of a SEO specialist, this is absolutely fine. Just beware of vendors promising you to make your site #1 on Google or providing 100 backlinks within 24 hours. Those are two major red flags: if it sounds too good to be true, then it is. While it can be argued that there are talented SEO professionals around the world, it cannot be refuted that a local SEO consultant will have an edge over an out-of-town one in dealing with a local market. Dealing with a local SEO vendor will allow you to check on its local references, hopefully even in person.
If your budget doesnt allow you to hire an SEO consultant, there are several places from which you can get backlinks by spending little to no money. Lets discuss some of them.
