Designers: Interior Design Links – How To Get Them

If I get another email from some dodgy company in some foreign country offering to boost my reciprocal links I’ll, I’ll, I’ll….I’ll probably either cry or laugh. You get them too I know.

Here’s how smart Interior Designers get some links without paying or investing too much of their spare time. Oh yes and ways that will actually work for you rather than work AGAINST your website.

Q. Why do I want links?

A. So customers can find your web site

A. So google ranks your website HIGHER in your customers searches.

You need to understand that good links ARE important for your business even if you then choose to do nothing about it.

First DO NOT DO THESE TWO:

1. 🙁  Spend a whole weekend of your time posting your web address on various message boards, forums or comments on blogs to do with interior design. This does not work. There is a technical reason why this does not work even though it seems like a good idea. Trust me DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME DOING THIS (Here’s the technical reason in case you don’t believe me: the html nofollow tag is automatically inserted on blogs/forums to hide it from Google)

2. 🙁 Pay someone to create lots of reciprocal links from sites they control. This works only in a very, very, very, very I MEAN VERY limited way. Don’t waste your money. If you know a little bit about reciprocal links then you will think I am a bit mad as surely all links to your site are good? No, sorry. I can explain why not in detail but it’s quite boring. OK here we are then…a link to your site must be from a good, relevant and genuine site. Google know about this faux strategy of linking and actively penalise against it!

Now you need to think about something.

Why would any potential CLIENT go to your web site? Let’s face it your site is probably pretty boring. It might have a few nice pictures and things saying how great you are. Everyone’s site is exactly the same as yours. So ask why google should want to go to your site. there may well be no good reason other than you would quite like it to because you might get more customers! but that’s talking about YOU and not YOUR CLIENT. And YOUR POTENTIAL CLIENT is the one that Google is trying to help.

So once again we return to the old adage: “Your site must contain genuinely unique and relevant content that is frequently updated”. Apologies for the previous paragraph if you already do this!

Think about it. Someone who is going to spend thousands of pounds on your services and associated products wants to see your work. So yes you have a portfolio but they also want to know how you work. They are probably interested in your opinions and keen to see what things you like. If they go back to check you out a few weeks later, when they are more keen to make a decision, they might want to see some of your even more recent work…not the same static website that actually you put up there 3 years ago and haven’t touched since.

So you need to write a blog as well as having your show piece web site. Then you will have new and hopefully interesting  stuff that people, who you neither know nor pay, will be keen to link to.

So start by linking your blog to interesting things (work related). Don’t ask for them to link back, you can but concentrate on writing good stuff. When anyone links to our web site/blog we are automatically notified by wordpress.com and we of course check these people out and may link back. If you want you can get some friends or associates to link back to your blog/web site but only do that about 5 or 10 times. If you do it too much Google at best ignores it at worst penalises you as it ‘thinks’ there is some form of trickery going on (which there is).

Write about your clients and potential clients (nice ones) and link to them if you are operating in the commercial sphere.

Add your site to industry directories

Add your site to google local businesses

Link to your Facebook business page and twitter. Generate contacts and links through your network there.

.edu and .gov links – When you have an intern be nice to them and make sure they link back to your site when they return to their studies.

Embedded links – when you write an article (like this one) and relevant links at the bottom. some of the related links should be to your own website/blog. Also embed links within the text to link to other relevant bits of your site like a picture, video or maybe to Wikipedia to explain a term. These type of links help google rank your writing more highly than it otherwise would be.

Comment on others web site and blogs. But do so genuinely and professionally. On  your comments have a very short 3 or 4 line bio of you which links back to your site. remember, above, I said that these links don’t work for Google but they will help people get to know about you a little bit. Don’t waste too much time on this though.

Issue press releases from time to time with links on. eg through PRWEB.com again with links.

Write articles on specific areas of design that you are expert in and get them and your links publicised eg through ezinearticles.com

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