Many first time web masters will say, "But I'm not trying to get links from sites outside of my customers." I ask why not? For many "boring" sites, they have little chance of being linked to by their core, primary audience.

Let's say that you were selling large vending machines. The vending machines that you sell are the type that you'd pop a few quarters into in order to buy a can of Coke or Pepsi. Outside the grocery store, in a break room, you would see these machines dispensing small bags of chips, candy, gum, etc. Pretty straight forward right? Not too technical nor too exciting. Your target audience would be grocery stores, convenience stores, businesses small and large, and many others. Although not many people search on "vending machine sales" or similar keyword phrases, when they do search, you want to show up. You may have all of the content on your site that describes your vending machines to the smallest detail, like how many 12 packs of soda you can load into the machine at once, but why would your latest client link to you? Sure you had the best price, lowest cost shipping, etc. but their company does not link to the company that they buy donuts from on Fridays, nor will they link to you. And if they did, would a link from XYZ Business Machines and Copiers really help you to improve your rankings for vending machines when most search engines see vending machine keywords often found with pages and sites about drinks, snacks, and so on? Links are an integral part of a high ranking. So, who WILL link to your site?

Remember Brainstorming and Creating a Mental Map?

There may be a secondary audience that you need to consider in your plan to gain more links and improve your rankings. In order to create some content that might appeal to the secondary audience, you'll have to explore a few directions that you might take to interest them. Remember brainstorming ideas for a report in school? Remember creating an outline or mental map? There is not a wrong or right way to brainstorm but it is essential that you do it. It can help you to pull out some ideas that normally might not hit you right away. Here is a quick example of some ideas related to the phrase "vending machines":

Pulling Ideas Out of The Mental Map

The picture above shows just a few trains of thought that I had with the phrase "vending machines". I could go on and on and the mental map might never be completed. Lets pull a few ideas out of this exploration of ideas.

• Vending machines dispense snack food, juices, sport and soft drinks. There are various recipes that call for candy or soda as an ingredient. Create an area for recipes on you site. Seed the area with a few recipes that you find or create (get permission if needed), allow users to submit their own recipes, go to various food related web forums and ask for user submitted recipes. Buy a cook book or two each month, follow some recipes online, and place a review of the resulting dish on your site with a few pictures. Better yet, hire some one to "blog" their discoveries on your site. There are bound to be some "foodies" that would be more than happy to get paid to do this for you.
• The food industry has history.
  Some companies like Coke, Hershey, and others are proud of their history and have mini-museums in some states, company stores, and factory tours. Provide a guide or review to getting to or around the towns where these attractions take place. When people go online to plan their vacations and find your resource, they may link to your guide.
• Products in vending machines often have promotional packaging.
  Odds are good that some of the products that are sold from vending machines have "promotional" cans, bags, additional "standees" that are normally meant for grocery stores or mini-markets, or other materials that candy memorabilia collectors, blogs, and others might find interesting. There are collectors out there, fans of various promotions, etc. and many like to browse web sites about their hobby and link to related sites and product pictures.

These are just a couple of ideas that I was able to quickly come up with, but maybe you see where I'm going with this?You want your site to rank on phrases like "coke vending machines"? Search engines not only need to see optimized pages on your site that talk about the phrase in order to give it a high ranking, they also need to see that other web pages from other sites also link to your pages about the same subject.

Think about who WOULD come back to your site over and over. Think about visitors who might not be your direct competitors but who do have related web sites. Encourage them to book mark your site and make the extra effort to link to your site by providing content that is appealing to them and you improve your chances of being found by your primary audience as well, an audience that may not really care about recipes that include ingredients from vending machines, and who will probably not link to you or write reviews about your site or products.

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