One of the questions I get asked most often about industrial websites is, "how do we get our site to the top of the search engine results?"  There's not just one answer to the question, but something that can make a huge difference is creating high quality backlinks.  A backlink is an inbound link to your website from any other website.  Search engines often use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the most important factors for determining that website's search engine ranking. Google's description of their PageRank system, for instance, notes that Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.  More votes - higher ranking!

There are a number of ways to create a large number of backlinks to your website, but today I'm focusing on the use of news releases and articles. Regularly submitting releases and articles to article directories or free news release distribution sites is one of the most effective  methods of not only creating backlinks but also generating more traffic to your website.

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Although you may not have developed a social media strategy - yet - if you've registered on a site, like LinkedIn, you have a profile.  Your profile is extremely important for more than the obvious reason.  Of course if someone you already know "looks you up" on LinkedIn, your profile will be what they see.  If you're already acquainted, they will probably connect with you no matter what your profile looks like.  What if someone is considering you for employment and checks to see if you have a LinkedIn profile?  What if you've joined a discussion group and made a comment and someone in the group wants to read more about you, because they think they might be able to do some business with you?  What if someone does a search on LinkedIn for a certain type of service provider and your name comes up, but instead of your friendly face all they see is that faceless "avatar?"