One of the most common practices, at least until recently, right after creating a website was to go searching for sites to beg for a link. I say until recently because now, after the advent of Google Penguin, Google’s latest algorithm, the rules have changed a bit, and you need to pay attention to both the links you give and those you receive. DO NOT ACCEPT LINKS FROM EVERYONE: this seems to be the latest warning in web marketing.
Yes, because you could be penalized by the tricky Google. So let’s say I own a hotel or agritourism that has just opened, and the web designer who created a nice site for me left me alone with the exhortation to go find backlinks for the site. What to do? Who to ask? First of all, if I were the owner of a website for a tourist facility, I would try to activate all the free services the web offers. Primarily those from Google
of course. And among these, the most important is definitely Google Place. By filling out the form, there is also a box to enter your website’s address. Then activate as many social profiles as possible for your business (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest), not so much to follow them all, although that would be a good thing, but because every time you fill out your user account—and always do it carefully, using the same address, street number, etc.—you can always insert your website’s URL: basically, an extra free backlink. A separate discussion should be reserved for YouTube, the video-sharing social media. Here too, having an open account is important, both to share your videos and because you can insert videos in your profile and in the description of each video. And since YouTube is owned by Google, it counts double.
At this point, the “dirty work” remains, which is to directly ask other sites or rather the administrators of other websites for a nice link to ours. Clearly, not everyone is willing to give it, especially if your site has just been launched and has a low page rank or does not deal with quality content. A suggestion at the beginning is to see what backlinks your potential competitors’ sites have. In this case, this website http://www.linkdiagnosis.com can help us by revealing the backlinks of any internet site. Clearly, we will be interested in discovering the backlinks of those sites that rank high in the Google SERPs we are interested in and aim to reach. Then there’s the vast sector of directories. Before the advent of search engines as we know them today, directories, even manually compiled and supervised by people, were important and widespread. Today, it’s important to be on DMOZ, even though it’s not easy to get approval right away.
tourismwebdirectory.it and lamiadirectory.com are other examples of directories for tourism and beyond, where it’s useful to register your site. Participating in thematic forums and reviewing your facility with article marketing on thematic web portals are always effective ways to get backlinks. On the most well-known and controversial Tripadvisor, it’s mandatory to at least be present, even if the lion’s share is taken by facilities willing to pay for advertising. Others I recommend are:
- zoover.it, the most famous travel portal in the Netherlands but also frequented in Italy
- Simone Seeks
- Oyster.com
The advice, even if it takes a bit more effort, is always to write different content for each review of your website
