Improve your search engine ranking with links from other websites

One of the main factors that search engines look at when ranking websites is the number of incoming links from other sites. Another factor is recommendations via social media channels, in particular Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Good content results in good links, so your first task is to create content that people will actually want to link to.

The key to this is to give your readers something they can’t get anywhere else. A blog is often a very good way to provide this kind of content. Of course, the kind of topics you could cover depends on your field.

Let’s take the following example: let’s say you are looking for a translator for your brochure. Translator A writes a blog and regularly reports on current projects and their love of languages. You found them via a Google search. Translator B has a basic website but is almost impossible to find anywhere else online. Who would you give your job to?

You could also work with a team of other website owners, but only those producing equally good content. If you are not completely new to your industry, you may already have a network of fellow freelancers that you could link to for mutual benefit.

However, in general, the harder it is to get a link, the more valuable it is. For example, links from specialist journals are known as editorial links, and are weighted more heavily than links from random website directories.

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