We all know that one of the biggest challenges of SEO is link building. We are encouraged by Google to build natural links by creating quality linkable content. This is great if you have a blog as you are constantly up dating your content and adding new and insightful information. You can also inject some personality into a blog which again attracts readers as well as links.
The problem comes if your site is not a blog and is aimed at providing a service or product, maybe you have a store type site and have endless lists of product descriptions and info. How is a page like this ever going to attract any serious links, especially if it is a fairly new site, sure you could start a blog, fill it with information on your products, but how does this differ to what you currently have?
Hooks
What you need to attract external links is a hook, something to give to visitors, something that will make them bookmark your site and hopefully link to your pages. As you can see on this site I provide free SEO tutorials with no quality spared, they are not just basics but they cover a full range of search engine optimisation aspects.
So if you have a service/product site you need to start thinking about a ‘hook’ something for your visitors to come back to and to link to. This hook can be absolutly anything, you only need to look at Amazon and how they do it. What they do is let you read the first few pages of a popular book you might be interested in, it gives you a flavour it helps you decide whether or not to purchase, then what do they do? Hey you can buy it here at the cheapest price.
Another example was a guy in the UK that I worked with who owned an electrical’s site selling, TVs, DVDs, Cameras and all other kinds of electrical goods. We were struggling getting links back to his site, I mean who links to a store? So what we decided on was creating a blog and issuing maintenance tips and specialist ways of taking photographs. We also included product reviews and updates including consumer feedback. You can guess what is coming next… straight after the reviews we referred the visitors to his products.
But the main thing to remember here is that we gave visitors and webmasters something worth linking to, something that added to the visitors experience. In my opinion hooks are an important part of link building and the whole search engine optimisation process.
As an SEO consultant working with a client I always look for ways to integrate quality, link worthy content and this in time will do some of the hard link building work for me 
Author: Tim (224 Articles)
Tim Grice is the owner and editor of SEO wizz and has been involved in the search engine marketing industry for nearly 7 years. Tim currently heads the Search Team at Branded3 Search, one of the biggest Digital Marketing companies in the UK working with major brands across Europe and the US.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good post!
I like it!.This will be a hot topic in most beginners.Beginners are very much invited to do these blogging thing.
Hi SEO company,
You will be surprised how many people, who seem to have a good knowledge of SEO, forget to add hooks to their site. When it is the best way to attract those all natural links.
Thanks for the comment.