backlinks

One of the biggest influencing factors in how high a site ranks in Google is the number and quality of other sites that link to them – what we call “backlinks”. (Because they’re links back to one particular site, from another site.)

If you want your site to rank higher than your competitor’s site, it’s very useful to see who links back to them. You may be able to get some of those sites to link back to your site as well. (You may get a backlink by leaving a comment on a post, by adding your site to their directory, by joining their association, by writing an article for that site, et cetera.)

To find a sampling of links to any site, you can perform a Google search using the link: operator. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list a selection of the web pages that have links pointing to the Google home page. Note there can be no space between the “link:” and the web page URL.

If you don’t get many results, perform the same search with and without the WWW in the domain name. (link:www.google.com and link:google.com)

Have you heard the old story about the two guys who were trying to outrun a bear? One stopped to put on his running shoes. The other exclaimed “Are you an idiot? This is a BEAR that’s chasing us, putting on running shoes isn’t going to help you outrun him!”

The other guy paused and said “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun YOU.”

The story is humorous, but presents a perspective I find valuable about web design in general and search engines in particular.

There’s always going to be some cool new tool, some effective new strategy, some more links that can be built, some wording that can be tweaked. I have to remember that the work I do doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to be a little better than what my competitors are doing.

I suspect it’s the same for your business, and very often “a little better” or “a little more” can make a huge difference. A little better response to your ad. A little more foot traffic to your store. A little higher average sale.

When we apply this principle to search engine rankings, “a little better” – like moving from #2 in Google to #1 – can make a huge difference. The site that ranks #2 for any particular search query generally gets 12-21% of all the clicks for that search. Pretty decent, right?

But the site that ranks #1 – just “A LITTLE BETTER” than rank #2 – will typically get 42-56% of all the clicks. Wow! A ranking improvement of just one position could mean double the traffic to your site.

And site #1 may only be “a little better” than site #2 in the eyes of Google. Both sites might be the same age and might be well-optimized for the same keywords – but site #1 might have just one more good backlink than site #2, and that’s what made the difference.

What are you doing to outrun your competitors?

Easy SEO Tip – Check Links to Competitors’ Sites

Outrunning Competitors in the Search Engines