Linkbuilding for Service Industries

How to link build when selling a service

[kaboomadvertising]

I've been reading a lot about link building, SEO/SEM, etc but I haven't seen much in the way of link building for a company that sells services instead of products. I don't necessarily want to have link page or do I? Just wondering what the procedure for this is?

Of course I've already found some niche directories for my industry and will submit to those once our site is completed but other than that, are there suggestions for link building service industries?

Also, how does one go about getting .edu or .gov links? The only info I've found involves black hat methods and I'm not so much into that.

[edited by: martinibuster at 6:29 pm (utc) on Sep. 11, 2006]
[edit reason] Removed specifics. [/edit]

[martinibuster]

Have you tried your local chamber of commerce? For any service industry it's important to get involved locally, which can earn you links.

Charity work can get you links.

Have you tried creating a helpful website with free downloads?
Have you tried creating a helpful website with tutorials?

For plumbing services:
Have you tried creating a helpful website that discusses common plumbing issues and what is involved in fixing them?

The only limit is your imagination.

[buckworks]

If it's a local service rather than something web-based, look for other local businesses you could trade links with.

A plumber could trade links with the carpenter, the electrician, the landscaper, the roofer, and more. A photographer could trade links with the bridal store, the florist, the jeweler and so on. Such links would all make good sense for local users. Remember to ask customers for links, too.

Set up a page that makes it easy for people to grab code snippets, maybe some graphics, and so on. The easier you make it for people to do what you want, the better the chance that someone will.

[barefieldboy]

Question on a similar line, more focused on concerns about relevance. We're a web dev agency and we feature prominent links on client homepages and prominent subpages to our site (always doing our best to vary anchor text and follow the 80-20 rule).

While we consider linking from sites we built back to ours as a perfectly relevant and legitimate marketing tool, could we be diluting the overall strength of our link-building because of the varying nature of our client's businesses, and if so, how do we overcome that?

Thanks

[roxyyo]

barefield,
to search engines these links *may* not be as relevant, but they are very highly relevant for branding and traffic. You may want to require your link text to say "Yourcompany Web Design" and capitalize on the anchor text. If you use your main keywords, you definitely will get a relevance boost, just not sure how each engine really treats site-wide links these days.

Do a yahoo link check on any web design company, however, you see the majority of links for high ranking sites are client sites.