In business, as in life, you are judged by the company you keep.   People look at your associates and assume you share similar values.   The same is true of the internet.  Google and other search engines assign values to your website, in part, based on the inbound and outbound links.

The process of link building can be complex, confusing and time consuming.  Done well however, the payoff can be a significant increase in the visibility of your website in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.  Large companies with large budgets can hire professionals, like Indianapolis Based, Slingshot to build the links for them, but what about small business owners?

I am currently using  a new link building tool for small business owners.  Linkdex, produced by a company in England offers small business owners an affordable link building tool complete with comprehensive tutorials.

The easy to use dashboard combines keyword search functions, with competitive rank tracking comparisons, and suggestions on how you can optimize your site, page by page. My favorite part of the tool is the resource library, which if you are willing to spend the time is a comprehensive guide to link building.   For the average small business owner, there is too much information to act on at once, but by working your way through the tasks, a few a week, your site will gradually improve.

Does it work?  I think so.  When we started, we ranked #1 for Small Business Marketing Indianapolis, but wanted to improve our position on a number of other key terms to improve the traffic to our site from organic search.   Submitting our site for directories suggested by Linkdex and studying our competitors linking strategy has helped us improve our search position. Today we rank in the top 10 for the following terms:

• Marketing Indianapolis
• Small Business Indianapolis
• Social Media Indianapolis

More important then search position are the results.  In the last six weeks, we have seen dramatic increases in our web traffic, website submissions, and phone from people who have found us on the web.  We have a long way to go to top the list in all the categories in which we work, but with time, and a little help from Linkdex, I think we can get there.

Want to check it out, you can have a free trial here: http://www.linkdex.com/about/roundpeg-seo-software/

(Full disclosure, we like the tool so much, we are now a paid affiliate for Linkdex)