How You Can Convince Internet Users That Your Site Is Worth Visiting

Nowadays, it’s not just enough to build a website or start a blog and sit back and wait for others to discover it. It may have worked for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, but you don’t see anyone else building a ballpark in the middle of a countryside field, are you? One of the things that should be the foremost in your mind when you’re trying to attempt either of these endeavours is whether anyone will discover that your page exists at all. This, our dear friends, is where the value of back linking comes in.

If you have ever visited a blog or a message board before, it is quite unavoidable to notice that some users have been posting up incoming third-party links that may have or have not something to do with the page that they may be frequenting. That, in its essence, is what back linking is all about. Back linking is also known by other, equally popular terms, like inbound links, in links, ping-backs or inward links.

The increasingly lucrative business of search engine optimization (SEO) has treated back linking as one of its pillars for years now, and for valid reasons, too. With the exception of any outside corporate sponsors, back linking is one of the more effective methods in getting the word out and letting people know that you have something that exists, and that you are willing to share it with them. Not only that, but it will also help in improving your site’s competitiveness in the search engine rankings as more and more people are gradually finding out for themselves how awesome your site can be.

Of course, you also have to keep in mind that posting links on others’ pages won’t do you any good if you can’t back it up-you have to offer your visitors something in return, something that is worth their time and their clicks. If you are on the creatively challenged spectrum like us here, then you may have figured it out by now that you need some help… and fast! Without further ado, here are some of the tips we have observed so far in how one can build a quality back link.

Interesting Content

Create a content that you think like-minded people will find interesting. Travel bloggers have one of the fastest growing communities around any online hub; however, if you are inclined to blog about travel, you would have to do more than posting your pictures and showing the rest of the world what they have been missing so far. Instead, you also have to offer your experiences and insights as well; and it is not just any kind of insight, mind you, you have to write in a way that would compel people to click through your page jumps. You have to write like you mean it and, more importantly, like you enjoy doing so.

Yes, hard as it may be to fathom, most people do read when they are visiting websites. You can’t expect everyone to have a high-speed connection, after all, so the next best thing that they can do while buffering their video streams is to read stuff, and that’s why you need to brush up on your minimally existing writing skills, if possible. This is not only limited to travel blogging, of course; whether your niche is in cooking, fashion, music, or anything that is worth of noting, keep in mind that users are trawling websites for quality, more than anything else, really.

The “Art” Of Mudslinging

Remember Perez Hilton? For a gay man, he really can quite off as being tool-sh, don’t you agree? However, you do have to respect his ability to continuously draw in readers to his blog, and that is mainly through one thing alone: he can attack a Hollywood celebrity like no other gossip columnist has done before him. And if you are no stranger to the comments sections of a particular blog, you may have already noticed that some folks make a habit out of criticism, even if their complaints have no solid ground to support the argument itself.

The Internet has emboldened folks to criticize a personality or a product in whatever forum they so choose. If you are not afraid of creating a little (but of course, nothing stays little for too long) controversy, then by all means, create a website or a blog that is purely meant for 24/7 ranting. Whether it may be on the state of politics, popular entertainment, or yes, even posers, just as long as you can write in an entertaining manner, it won’t be long before other people will frequent your page, if only to be outraged for a while. However, just remember this one thing: if you are planning to complain for a living, then, at least, do not make yourself too emotionally involved on it; the last thing anyone else needs is for someone to go overboard with this.

Lists

Create an endless list of lists. To paraphrase a news feature on Time Magazine a few years ago, everyone’s a sucker for lists, whether it makes sense or otherwise is purely secondary. If you have a passion for movies, then you can start with something as simple as your “Top Ten Rom-Coms for the Modern Generation”, or something to that effect. Why should post your writings in a listed format? Simple enough-one of the most searched adjectives on the Web happen to be fronted by “top”, “best”, “most”, “awesomest”, or any other superlatives your decent vocabulary can come up with. At the very least, there will be a passing chance that your page may get included on the top list. Convenient, isn’t it?

However, just because you are ranking something does not mean you can write anything you want or, worse, swerve the readers whom you have grabbed with your page headings. Not only will you have to be comprehensive and knowledgeable about the topics that you are listing, but you should also maintain an air of objectiveness, if not outright professionalism. Think about it from the point of view of a casual reader-if the content you are reading looks like it was a list thrown together haphazardly just so it can get hits, you will also be alienated too, won’t you?

Vlogging

With the advent of user-shared video websites like Youtube, many bloggers are turning to their home video kits and start shooting whatever it is they want to capture on record. As one of the more concrete examples, James Rolfe’s Angry Video Game Nerd web series has been garnering a decent amount of hits because of his constant dedication to create and upload “episodes” on a weekly basis. By using this template as one of your possible interpretations, you can also shoot or edit a customized video, post it on YouTube, and backlink it back to your home blog.

Of course, shooting a video requires a serious case of stepping up to the challenge. For one, you have to be technically proficient with the tool of your choice to give your videos a sense of having been created with decent production values. And surely, there is also the manner of how you can go about crafting the scenes in your video. If there’s a chance for you to use a storyboard, then that’s not a bad idea for you to follow at all.

Subscription

Offer your users a chance to subscribe. Sites like WordPress and Blogger have already made it a habit out of encouraging people to subscribe updates to the blogs that they like the most. However, since subscribing to their in-site services means that you also have to have an account to do so, then your blog won’t get past the community aspect that your blog may have been lumped in. So, if there is any chance that you have created your personal website or blog from scratch, offer your users some wider subscription options like newsletters or RSS feeds. They won’t have to go through any other URL, since any updates will have to go straight to their personal e-mail inboxes.

Discussions

Utilize message boards, forums, and social media to your advantage. If you are looking to promote your own food blog, for example, then it may be logical for you to start on the first place that you would have to go to: food websites that are more popular than yours. Enter a discussion thread related to your blog and make sure that the replies you are posting are relevant to the topic at hand, all the while pimping out your homepage to the other users on the page.

If that seems like too much work for you, then here’s an easier way: inform your friends through social networking sites that you have a blog out. Paste your link on their profiles, if not on yours, and hope for the best.

Certainly, not all of these aforementioned tips are guaranteed to get you the hits you are looking for; in fact, you may even have to come to the point where you have to hire a SEO expert to do all of the dirty work for you. However, if there’s anything that doesn’t change either with the way you do things on either the Internet or real life, it is that the only way you can achieve your goal is by patiently working at it.

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