Okay, we have gone over some lawn care lawn care basics., so now we move on…What your lawn care marketing program needs is back links. This is may the most important part of ranking your site. In fact, pretty much the rest of this series will be about getting back links.
Now, let’s eat some meat!
Back links
Back links are internet “votes” about the content your web page provides. What you will be learning during the course of this “get more lawn customers” thing is how to stuff the ballot box. We are not talking about “spam.” We are talking about getting FOUND online.
If you prefer to wait for years as other lawn guys slowly link to you; good luck, we wish you the best, but this may not be the best place for you. This lawn care marketing blog is about building your OWN back links and not waiting for anybody. And it is easier than you think.
Off site SEO is performed using links. A link is a sign post for the spiders saying “Denver Lawn Care information this way.” There are two types of links: straight links and anchor text links.
- A straight link looks like http://www.BobsLawnCare.com
- An anchor text looks like Denver lawn care. An anchor text is html coded like this:
<a href=”http://www.BobsLawnCare.com> Denver lawn care </a> Copy this, and put it in your computer and call it “anchor text.” This way you can copy and paste it when you need it. And you will be needing it.
An anchor text link further informs the spiders what the website content relates to.
There is a myth that a link from a non-relevant website to yours has no value, as in a link from a car website to your pool supply website. This is absolutely not true. That being said, it is true that a link from a relevant site is better (Page Rank being equal). The only links that you should stay away from are paid links. These are referred to as “link farms.” Being associated with these link farms can bring down your ranking, or even get you banned. If you see an online ad saying “500,00 links to your site only $9.95” run away fast!
Page rank and link value
Google assigns an “authority index” to the sites that it reviews. Generally, the higher the page rank (PR) of the site linking to yours, the more valuable the link. Do not confuse PR and search engine position because they are not necessarily related. I have had many sites with a low PR rank above pages with a higher PR. There is a lot of talk in the SEO community that due to the volume of pages on the internet, Google is according less value to PR now than it did in the past.
Now you now why you need links. Next we will look at getting them.
