Can One High Quality Link Really Make A Difference?

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 10:00 am

We’ve all heard how important link building is to our site’s overall ranking. We know that the people who are telling us this consistently rank well for the keywords they are targeting or soon will be. We know we should be doing it but we get so busy that we forget. After all, link building is just one piece of the larger whole of traffic generation, right?

We’ve also recently read in the “Be A Better Blogger Series” that guest posting on another blog or newsletter is an excellent way to get links and more traffic. Because I had a story to tell about my experience with Irritable Bowel Syndrome(IBS), I made an offer to write that story for inclusion in the HelpForIBS.com newsletter.

The story idea was accepted, I wrote it and submitted it for their approval. I heard back from them saying they were going to use it and the story was published in their weekly newsletter on Tuesday.

I read the story and was pleased that they chose to keep it mostly in its entirety.

I knew the site ranked very well for their keywords and that it would be nice to have a few people outside my target market viewing my pages and looking around.

Later that day, I checked my stats just for kicks. That’s when it really hit me!

In the course of about 3 hours, I had generated more than half of the previous month’s unique visitors and my page views were off the chart!

As I mentioned, this newsletter is not highly targeted to the newbie internet marketing niche. I did not expect a spike in subscribers or sales and I did not see any. I really started this project to give something back to this site that has helped me almost completely recover from IBS. Writing about something you care is always a good place to start when you’re looking for these opportunities.

What did I learn?

Look to the things that mean something to you when looking for post ideas.
Do NOT overlook any connection you’ve made in life or online when looking for help.
Be gracious to those that have helped you and it will come back to you in spades.
If I continue doing this with more finely-targeted vehicles, I will see both traffic and revenue increase.

Can one high quality link really make a difference? Absolutely!

Do you have a similar experience? Please leave me a comment and we’ll discuss it. Also, don’t forget to bookmark me on your favorite social media site by clicking the Share This icon below.