One of the most effective ways to improve your website’s organic search engine position is to increase the quantity and quality of both inbound and outbound links to established, highly rated sites. As an added benefit, any inbound links are going to directly increase the amount of traffic from the referring sites which provide the links. Too many people obsess over the concept of “reciprocal links”, and this is unfortunate. Whether or not another site provides a reciprocal link is not nearly as important as the links themselves, even if they are one-way links. Let us take a separate look at inbound and outbound links.

Outbound links from your site to another site should provide your visitors with sources of additional information that relates to your business or your site’s content. Let’s say that you own a business that sells small kitchen appliances, it would be a good idea to provide links to the manufacturers that you represent, independent product reviews, and general consumer information on the various appliances. By doing so, you are enhancing the usefulness of your site to its visitors (and lessening the likelihood that they might choose to turn elsewhere … perhaps a competitor … for that same information). Simply by association with these sites, your site’s own search engine ranking will improve.

There are a few guidelines when setting up outbound links:
1) Setup the links to open in new tabs or browser windows so that your visitors do not lose track of their point of origin.
2) When choosing outbound links, try to find sites that are, in themselves, highly search rated. A good reference is a site’s “PageRank”, as indicated by the Google Toolbar that you should have installed on your browser. (It’s free!) Try to choose businesses that have a PageRank that is as high or higher than your own.
3) Links that are anchored to text (such as my Google Toolbar link, above) are more valuable than links that are anchored to graphics. If possible, use the two in conjunction.
4) Links that relate to the content that appears on the linking page is more valuable than more general links.
5) Do not include more than a maximum of 50 outbound links on a page.

Inbound links from other sites to yours are even more important. Most of the same guidelines still apply. Every link counts when determining your search engine ranking, as long as it appears on a recognized page of a highly rated site. What you don’t want (but probably cannot prevent) are incoming links from so-called “link farms” which are trying to build their own search engine ranking by capitalizing upon their outbound links to your sites and hundreds of others, typically with totally unrelated content. Obtaining inbound links from the same websites to which you are supplying outbound links should be one of your top priorities, particularly if their websites are more highly rated than your own. The appliance manufacturers, for example, may have links to “where to buy our products”. Try to insure that your business is not only listed but that there is a link to your website. Inbound links from any directories that relate to your business should be your next priority. Don’t forget to include blogs, and even appropriate MySpace and Facebook pages. Whatever effort you put into link creation today will pay dividends tomorrow. In difficult economic times, I can’t think of a better way of helping to insure your continuing success.

I was recently part of a discussion in LinkedIn’s Guerrilla Marketing Tips for Small Businesses group to which I belong. The question involved how to compete in a David vs Goliath scenario where a large national chain opens a location in your local service area. In this instance, the discussion was started by the owner of a small computer repair company (let’s call it “HKR Computer Repair”) who had a big computer repair franchise (let’s call them “Nerds R Us”) open in his backyard. He expected to prevail in the long run but was afraid of the short-term impact upon his business. He wanted to know how to compensate for such a large presence and not lose cash flow. The following was my response:

You are likely to experience some short-term loss as a result of the money that they will spend to launch their new location. In the long run, nothing is easier than competing against Goliaths. You’ve already identified some of the weaknesses in the instance of “Nerds R Us”. In general, you should have a major competitive advantage against a big outfit with high overhead and a “one size fits all” business concept. You know your market. Do your customers want to communicate directly with the knowledgeable owner of a business or some kid who’s just finished 48 hours of training the week after he quit his job at Starbucks?

The vast majority of my company’s clients are successfully competing against the Wal-Marts of their industries. Sometimes it requires the redefinition of a business in order to better capitalize upon the Goliath’s weaknesses or market segments where the Goliath cannot possible compete. Although not one of my clients, I like to relate the success story of a family hardware store that has found its niche while most similar businesses simply roll over and die as soon as a Home Depot or Lowes rolls into town. South Fork Hardware has been in business in South Fork, Pennsylvania for 60 years, and they have transformed themselves into the tire chain specialists of North America. Home Depot or Wal-Mart can’t afford to sell tire chains. They couldn’t possibly maintain the inventory of all of the necessary variations and sizes in their thousands of retail locations. South Fork Hardware, on the other hand, through one centralized location, can supply any set of tire chains imaginable and ship the same day. Admittedly, there is not an enormous market for tire chains these days; however, when you own the market, the lion’s share of a specialized market can be extremely profitable. Do a Google search for “tire chains”, and you will see that www.tirechain.com (South Fork Hardware’s URL and new business persona) comes up at #1. Alternately, do a “type-in” of www.tirechain.com or www.tirechains.com , and you will see how they have come to “own” their market.

As a side note, I have purchased three sets of tire chains from South Fork Hardware over the last 10 years. Do you see how I am unintentionally promoting their business? Your customers will do the same. Particularly when people are dissatisfied with a product or service, they spread the word. It should be easy for you to weather what is certain to be a fast-moving storm. Your business should continue to thrive long after Nerds R Us has moved out of town (perhaps because they couldn’t face your competition).

Did you ever think that maybe they hadn’t performed the proper market research before opening their new location? They could be in for a big surprise when they discover that they have to try to compete against a well-established competitor, HKR Computer Repair!