First and foremost, it is important to note that link building on its down does not help a website’s ranking in the search engine results page. For a site to be at the top tier of the page, SEO and link building have to work hand-in-hand.
On the Internet, SEO is the most important marketing strategy to improve any business. Organic and ethical optimisation methods are used for off page and on page optimisation. Its services include keyword building, content writing, link building, HTML code optimisation and more.
Why build links?
It is important to establish links to your site from other related websites because this will help your site to get top placements in search engine listings. Basically, browsers and crawlers consider your site to be more popular when more people click on it. The more visitors you have, the higher you climb to the top of the tier. Depending on your budget, you can opt for one way linking, reciprocal linking, or three way linking.
What are the types of links?
The first type of link is the reciprocal link. This is where you literally exchange a link with another web site. You each put a link that connects your sites together. This creates a symbiotic relationship where the sites do greatly benefit from each other.
The second type is not really an exchange at all. A visitor to your site simply decides whether or not he or she will put a link to your site on their site. If they like the information presented, then chances will work to your favour.
The third type of link exchange is an artificial type. The idea behind this is to create a "triangle" of links. By its definition, it requires at least three web sites for it to work. The web sites involved are any three sites, and they each only link to one of the other sites. It basically goes in a direction around the triangle they form.
How do you go about the process of link-building?
You first have to ask the other site (usually via email) if they are interested to create a link back to yours. It is important to be professional about it and to give them all the necessary information. Otherwise, they will just treat it as spam mail.
How are links helpful to your site?
Major search engines such as Google and Yahoo use link popularity as measurement to judge the quality of your website. A link is tantamount to a vote for your site. If there are 500 links, then there are 500 votes.
Are All Links Equal?
Definitely not! A link to more popular sites is more valuable simply because they already have the reputation for outstanding service and quality products. Search engines put more value on well-established sites. Creating a form of connection with them increases your reputation and adds to your trust value.
What are the most ideal websites to establish links with?
Firstly, there are several factors to consider. You can trust a website by measuring its:
- Age: the older it is, the better of course.
- Page Rank: look at the Google Toolbar PR for this. It’s a number between 0 to 10, 10 being the best.
- No. of pages indexed: if a site has thousands of pages indexed in a search engine, it means that it has gained the trust of major players in the industry. To find out how many pages are indexed, simply type www.domain.com in Google. This should show you all the pages indexed in Google.
- No. of incoming links: type link:http://www.domainname.com in Google or Yahoo. It will show you a list of websites that are linking to that domain.
- Traffic: use tools such as: Google Trends for Websites, Compete, Quancast, and Alexa. However, these tools are not 100% accurate
- Others: there are other automated applications to help you determine a site’s quality. A good example is SEOmoz Trifecta Tool.
What are the methods of link building?
There is the organic link building. This is where you generate tons of free links naturally over time. You first have to prove your value to the online community by doing the following:
- Writing quality content –the actual body and text of your pages should be interesting and engaging.
- Start a blog - reviews play a crucial role in the customer’s decision making process. You will be able to also attract a lot of natural links from other bloggers & websites who finds your content useful.
- Use social bookmarking and other social networks – if you get popular in any of the big social bookmarking sites such as - Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Mixx - your content will get a lot of attention. The more people will write about you, the more audience you’ll reach. Make a shout out at Twitter, Facebook, or Friendster and your article will be read by the site’s visitors.
- Write about industry news as well – a reader might find interesting news in your site. Once he goes to his own blog, he will likely create a link to your story.
- Freebies - this can attract hundreds of links if the freebies are worth it. When you give something useful and important, people will naturally link to you.
Artificial Link Building basically refers to links that can be manipulated. Here are a few examples:
- Link Requests and Exchange – spams can commonly happen here. Tendency is that webmasters will simply delete your mail. Webmasters often ignore the following:
- Letters that begin with “Dear Webmaster…”
- Mentioning PR in the mail
- You are asking to create a link with a website that is totally not related to yours
- Awful content, with an overkill of keywords
- Your website is not indexed by search engines
- Your website has more outbound links than content
What are the other helpful tips in link building?
- Directory submission: it basically refers to submitting your site to web directories. Web directories are like yellow pages. Note that you must submit only to those directories that are trusted. Notable ones are: Dmoz, Yahoo Directory, Business.com, BOTW, etc.
- Article submission: this gets you links. Some reputable directories are: Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Article Dashboard, iSnare etc.
- Guest blogging: you can include your author biography at the end of the article which often allows you to create a link back to your site. If the readers find your post very interesting, they are likely to follow the link to your blog.
- Press release: this is coverage to a wider media. It’s best that you hire a professional to do this.
- Widgets/Footer/Plugins: you have to be very careful and vigilant or you can get penalized by for overdoing this. Read what Matt Cutts has to say on widget bait for your guidance.
- Give away award badges: if you are a company that has been given them a badge to display this award with pride, you can surely get about 80% of these companies to put it on their website.
- Start an affiliate program: manage affiliates under your wing, while they can also create a link back to your website.
- Sponsor links instead of paying: since you are sponsoring, the members will likely to put your logo/banner on their site. You can also donate money to the open source initiatives. For a small donation, they will list your name in their website. Remember, search engines are continually changing their algorithm. The natural method has proven to work best over time.
- Basically, link building does take time, but with patience and persistence, you can create a name for yourself.
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