Incoming links to your website are arguably one of the main contributers to your website rising up the rankings in the search engines. There are many ways that you can get links to your website or blog. However, it is important that you don’t fall into the trap of buying them from link farms. These type of links don’t carry any weight anymore and could DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD for your website.

I prefer much more natural methods. Actually putting content on your website that people find useful. (What? I here you shout). Yep, you might off heard of the terms link baiting or link magnets. These are all terms that basically mean the same thing, which is getting people to link to your website because the content is of good quality. Hell, this is how the search engines started back in the day and this technique now still widely used to rank webpages.

Over the coming weeks i’m going to post a series of articles were I reveal my top ten strategies that I use to generate one way incoming links. So lets get started with the first….

1. Writing Product/Service Reviews

Like the many millions of people who buy goods on the internet every day I, like them, like to read up on what people I saying about the product or service that i’m interested in. This is a major factor for me as to whether i’m going to get out my credit card and purchase the product or not.

Whatever it is your purchasing; web hosting, seo software, keyword research software etc. There is always an huge array of options to choose from. People want help from others who know more than themselves. They want help to sort through the mulitude of options that are available online.

They need the euiquavelant of an honest store assistant (if one exists hehe) that is going to guide them to the best product that will solve their problem or need. That person should be you! This technique has been around in affiliate marketing for years and it’s still used for one reason – It Works!

Now obviously you can’t own all the products that you may want to promote through your site.

If you don’t own the product: here are a few pointers to get you started writing your reviews:

- focus on the relevancy and potential benefits of the product to the market.
- set up a Google Alert “<product name> review” to get a feel for what other people are saying about it.
- look at the reputation of the product owner/designer.
- gather information from the product sales page.
- search forums and discussion boards.
- follow up on the testimonials for the product.

If you do own the product then think:

- what was my first impression of the product?
- what is my impression now that I’ve bought it?
- what one thing did I find most useful?
- which type of person is that product right for?
- what are the top five things that I’ve learned from the product?
- did the product deliver on its sales letter?
- can I recommend it?

I personally think the last point is very important indeed! You must try to give an honest opinion here as this could affect the trust your potential customers have in you. If you don’t think its any good, you could tell them this and then use this point to recommend another product you’re promoting in the same market.

I’ll cover this more in the article on product comparison tables.

When you start to craft yor review, it must be well balanced. It’s good practice to start with a major weakness of the product. For example, it could be something like, Product X has a major weakness in that it’s too full of detail. I know that might be a little cheesy but you get my point.

Other important points to think about when writing your review:

- speak directly to your audience, use a conversational tone of writing.
- create a good balance of pros and cons.
- try to spread out the main benefits across the article so that you keep things interesting.
- try to phrase your benefits into real world examples.

To summarise product/service reviews are an excellent way to get incoming links. People need social proof to help them make their decision whether to buy or not and product reviews provide this. Also if you don’t like writing, (me included) then just outsource it to a site like elance.com or getafreelancer.com and use the points above in your job description that i’ve listed in the if you don’t own the product section.

Stay tuned for the next article in the series – Generating 1000′s of incoming links through Blogs

Disclosure: You should assume that the owner of this website is an affiliate for providers of goods and services mentioned on this website. The owner may be compensated when you purchase after clicking on a link, not always though. I don’t just promote products and services for the sake of it. If I’ve used them I’ll then write a review based on my experiences with the product or service. Perform due diligence before purchasing from this or any other website.