My friend came up with a brilliant idea a couple of years ago. It all started because so many of her single friends were running into the same issues when it came to online dating – they kept telling her, “It’s just so difficult to find the right person, you don’t know who to trust anymore.” When the profile says 6 ft tall, is he really? How current are the selfies displayed on the app? Was it taken within the last 10 years? In fact, here are the top 10 common lies people use online dating apps.

• Age
• Height (see, I told you)
• Weight
• Body type (men will frequently describe themselves as “athletic”)
• Income (usually 20-40% over)
• Job type/title
• Outdated photos (again, I told you)
• Hobbies and interests (‘walks on the beach’ is most popular)
• Looking for a relationship (this actually surprised me)
• Relationship status (this surprised me even more)

So, what was her brilliant idea? It’s a program where one friend nominates another friend and submits an application on their behalf. Then, the program chooses five potential matches (10 people total) within a certain radius and hosts a fun party to see what happens. I am leaving out a lot of details but that’s the gist of it. The key behind the program’s brilliance is simple: it builds trust because someone else is vouching for you. This is why referral marketing works, this is why Yelp reviews are important, this is why reputation matters. What others say about you builds trust.

Imagine you are Google, and you are ranking businesses to send traffic to. Your goal is to send traffic to the most deserving and the most talked about business…how will you know? Easy. It’s called link building.

Link building is an SEO term for the process of getting other websites to link to a page on your own website in order to earn a higher spot on the search engine results pages (aka SERPs). The more links you’ve built (meaning other sites share links to you) and the measured authority of the links you built (meaning those who link to you are credible) will determine one thing…trust. You are a trusted company according to a lot of people and that will help your SEO tremendously, which will increase your traffic to your website significantly.

Google’s goal is to find the most trustworthy links from trustworthy sites. For example, if you are a golf academy that has produced a lot of PGA champions and all these top athletes keep referring to your academy on their own websites…wow…Google is going to love you and send you a ton of traffic from those looking to find the right academy for their own training.

Finally, let’s talk about how we can start building a link. There are hundreds of ways to do this, but I would start with these 3 options:

• Continuously create content: I mentioned this in our last post – content is the key to successful SEO. Focus on your industry and on your client’s needs. With quality content, you will gain authority in time. Make sure that your content is relevant, useful and well-structured. This ensures that others who will find your content useful will want to link to it again and again. That’s how you get great backlinks; you earn them!
• Build relationships: For good link building, you need to build good relationships. There are plenty of opportunities to build new contacts. You should start with niche-related communities: forums, blogs or social groups. Make the first step and start contributing with interesting and relevant comments and posts, providing contextual value to each discussion. By actively participating in these online communities focused on your niche, you will not only gain some good backlinks, but you will always have access to the newest industry news and be able to connect to people who share your passions.
• List your site in trustworthy directories: There are many online directories that provide real value to the users. The ideal directory will not only give you the chance to post a link to your website, but also provide useful information for your potential customers. There are even tools and apps that help you get on these lists…even niche directories.

So, there you go. A little bit about backlinks and the important role it plays with SEO. Again, don’t forget, it’s all about building trust. Continue to be relevant out there by keeping your website dynamic… and don’t forget to help other credible sites by offering links to their content on your website. Because at the end of the day, we’re all just single businesses trying to sift through the lies and hoping to find a match.

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