SEO for PR professionals and marketersInbound links are basically votes that are cast for your website.  Each inbound link is a vote for you and your content, and in this democratized world of SEO the more quality votes you have, the more likely your site will turn up in search results.  Here are 5 tips to help you get more quality inbound links to your site.

1. Link to your website from your blog correctly

Your blog is a great source for new content that engages your audience.  It’s also a great place to include well crafted links to your website.  A well crafted link consists of two things: the anchor text and the link.

The anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink.  The link is the address of the page you are linking to.  In search engines, both of these items have a “vote”.

Anchor text in a hyperlink is used by search engines to figure out what the linked page is about.  For example, if I link to media database, it gives the Cision Media Database page a “vote” for the term “media database” as well as an inbound link from this blog.

A common mistake people make is linking words such as “Click here.”  “Click here” doesn’t tell search engines anything about the page it’s linked to and is a wasted opportunity to gain some valuable SEO.

2. Link to your website from press releases correctly

Using the same linking concepts above, you can add well crafted links to your press releases and gain the inbound links from every site that posts your releases.  One release can result in dozens of new inbound links!

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn, has a Websites section under your profile where you can add up to three links to sites of your choice.  Learn how to add website links to LinkedIn.  There’s a little bit of a debate on how SEO friendly these links are, but if search engines pick up on these links they are a great opportunity to get three inbound links from a great domain.

4. Facebook & Twitter

Facebook and Twitter are great places to share content and ideas with other people.  Unfortunately all links in these sites are automatically tagged to not count as inbound links for SEO.

Making friends and getting followers and engaging with them increases the probability that they will link to your content though.  When they take that link out of Twitter or Facebook and share it on a blog or website, you get free publicity plus the benefits of increased SEO.  Do the same for them and have that SEO karma come around full circle.

5. Digg

If you happen to know about Digg, you know that it can be tough to reach the front page of it (unless your post is about a new way of wrapping something in bacon).  But if you happen to have a post that becomes popular and reaches the front page, it will get search engine credit and be a great inbound link.  A key to making the front page of Digg is to have a lot of friends on Digg and tell them when you have a new story posted.  It’s not easy, but this article on making the front page of Digg may help.

Update: Alexander Mason has published this post in Swedish.

5 SEO tips för PR-branschen och marknadsförare

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