Getting Links For A Small Start-up

... between a rock and a hard place

[austtr]

Against my better judgement I allowed myself to be talked into developing a site for a regional sales and distribution company to promote a particular food processing appliance for domestic use.

The site has been online for several months and I am really struggling to get it kick-started with some inbound links. The ODP submission may, or may not, be accepted at some future date.... that can't be relied on.

The usual searches for "add site+topic" brings up sites that are direct competitors and no-one is interested. The Google white bar of doom doesn't help. My own sites and other customer sites are all travel/tourism related, way off-topic, and it would be stupid to have a link for a food processor appearing on them.

I'd be grateful for any suggestions on how to break out of this "linkless limbo" that the little stand-alone site has to contend with.

[juniperwasting]

You might try affiliates, or something like BizRate and Epinions?

[EarWig]

austtr

1. Submit the site to paid incluion in Yahoo.
2. If you are a web design company link to the site from your portfolio page to kick start it.
3. Wait for ODP listing
4. Do further research into possible other inbound links from site already listed - do not give up.
5. Submit to other main search engines

Regards
EW

[tigger]

you could also try some of the local small directories

[engine]

Put out a news release: Publications picking it up will usually provide a link, although the value of the link can sometimes be short lived.

In addition, contact other local outfits in the same position.

[glengara]

Could you try having a "Free Food Processor" to be won every month promo on any of your sites?

[takagi]

regional sales and distribution company

Since it is a regional active company, you could also submit to the regional category in ODP.

If local shops selling the product have a (small) home page, you could do some kind of link exchange. Add a page to this site titled "Where to Buy Our Delicious Product". On it you put the names, addresses and if available URLs. Then you ask politely for a backlink.

[topr8]

go through ODP looking for all the small directories that they list, there are loads of them, quite a few are 'generic' business directories that you can submit to.

often they are free and often too they are pay for but cheap enough to consider submitting to.

also i'll bet there are loads of 'hobby' type food sites out there, ask them for link exchanges - i've found ott sycophantic requests which tell them how wonderful their site is can be very productive in these situations.
or just offer to pay for a link, look for sites with affiliate links or rather a couple of cj type banners, usually these people are hopeless at the affiliate thing but are interested in making a few bucks, so offer them a few bucks, think how many links you could buy with the $300 yahoo fee.

[fathom]

take your primary targeted keywords and/or keyphrases and type them into google = add +"directories" and then + "directory" after the primary word or phrase... you'd be surprised at how many "submit your site" sites are out there with a listing waiting for you! ;)

[jeffb]

Another thing you can do on Google is to check who's linking to your competitors (type "link:www.competitorsiteurl.com" in the search bar for any competitor whose backlinks you want to check).

You'll likely find a number of sites that are not directly competing with you, but are close enough in topic to help you. And if they've already linked with your competitor there's a good chance they'll be willing to exchange links with you, too.

[SlowMove]

The usual searches for "add site+topic" brings up sites that are direct competitors and no-one is interested.

Well, at least you know how to find the direct competitors. If they have decent PR values, checking their backlinks might provide a few clues as to how they got going.