Link building is one of the most important aspects of website promotion and is also one of the most difficult and time consuming tasks. It is the process of acquiring links that point back to your website. They are so important because search engines basically count each link as a vote for the quality of your website, the theory being that someone would not link to you unless there was something worth linking to. There are many different ways of acquiring links to your site, some more effective than others. This article will shed some light on the do’s and don’ts of link building so that you can spend your time on the things that will benefit you the most.

Link building background

Search engines are very good at counting links. The difficult part is determining how trustworthy links are. A link on a blog or forum could possibly be spam so obviously, search engines don’t expect them to be trustworthy. A link from a high ranking website or a website with a .org domain however, are more likely to be reliable. This is not to say that form and blog links are not useful however. Just remember that search engines count links for a reason. They want to determine how good sites really are so that they can rank them accordingly.

For this reason, obtaining links purely to rank well in search engines can land you in trouble. If a search engine detects that links have been obtained un-naturally, you could be penalised. For example, imagine a new web site that has just been launched. The webmaster has heard that links pointing to his site will increase his rankings so he searches on Google to find a submission service that submits his site to 1000 directories for £100, thereby obtaining 1000 incoming links. Unfortunately, obtaining this many links in a short period of time does not look natural. If all the links point to the same page i.e his homepage, then this look even more unnatural. If each link uses the same anchor text, then once again, this looks very unnatural and he may have just wasted his £100.

Paid links – good or bad?

There has been quite a lot of talk about paid links recently and if they benefit or harm your site. The truth is that paid links can harm your site but it really depends on why you acquire these links. If you buy a link on another site in order to increase your page rank, you are effectively trying to fool the search engines so this is not a good idea. However, if you acquire a paid link in order to be visible to the audience on that site and obtain some direct traffic and help build your brand, then this is fine. It is difficult to say how a search engine would know the purpose behind the paid link, but to be safe, be honest about why you want the link and if its only because you want to increase your rankings then spend your time on more suitable areas such as building good quality content which we will discuss later.

Link exchanges

Swapping links for the sole purpose of appealing to the search engines is a waste of time. If you are doing so because you genuinely want you audience to know about the other site then there is nothing wrong with that, but search engines can easily determine swapped links and if they see that most links on a site have been exchanged, then they will obviously not look natural or trustworthy and will therefore have little effect on your search rank.

How to get links properly

After reading this you may be left slightly daunted and wondering how you can possibly obtain enough links to rank well in the search engines and drive traffic to your site. Don’t worry though. By utilising a combination of link building techniques and sticking to the basic principles, and above all – having patience, you will be able to build a very successful campaign. We will now look at some of the main things you need to be doing in your link building campaign.

Directory submissions

We have already established that obtaining many links from low quality, untrustworthy sources will not help you ranking very much. However, it is still worth investing some time submitting your site to some good quality, search engine friendly directories. To start things off, submit your site to about 100 directories related to your sites content. Although this may have limited effect on your rankings and will bring in very little visitors from click throughs, it will help your site get indexed quickly and set a foundation for the rest of your link building. Using a service such as usefulsubmit.com is a good place to start.

Paid links

Take a look on text-link-ads.com and find some good quality sites in categories related to your site. Try to find sites with a high page rank that display paid links prominently and that don’t have too many other paid links on the same page. When you find 1 or 2 suitable sites, buy a link on the site and monitor any traffic you get from it.

Remember that we want to get click throughs from targeted visitors rather than purely increase page rank. This way we can honestly say that we are not trying to fool the search engines and any targeted traffic that comes through as a result of your paid link may end up recommending you, bookmarking you, linking to you and so on. If your paid link does not provide you with a satisfactory amount of traffic then cancel it and try another site. Once you identify sites that provide you with adequate amounts of traffic stick with them and continue to monitor and add your link to more sites as your budget allows. Hopefully you will see your backlinks increase as a result of the visitors coming from your links liking your content and linking to you.

Good quality content

This is where most of your energy should be focussed. Keep writing new content and updating your site whenever you can. This is the best way of obtaining good quality one way incoming links. If you own a site than chances are, you are pretty knowledgeable about the subject area, so share your knowledge with others and you will see huge benefits. Writing about something new and exciting in your subject area, some problem you have come across and solved, tutorials and anything controversial are all good topics to explore. When talking about good quality content, don’t just focus on text. With the rise of broadband, video has become a huge commodity on the internet so take advantage of this if you can.

Asking for links

Another good way to get good quality, one way incoming links is to simply ask for them. If you have a good site with good content that would be of interest to users of a popular site you know about, then its worth sending a personalised email to the owner of that site informing them of how their users could benefit from visiting your site. Be professional and sincere. Only ask if you truly think having your link on their site would be mutually beneficial. 9 out of 10 of the people you ask may well turn you down but remember, its quality not quantity that counts so don’t be disheartened if not all of your requests are met.

User generated content

Don’t focus your link building campaign around search engines alone. Social networking is huge now and is changing the way people find the things they want on the Internet. Create an account with popular sites such as digg.com and stumbleupon.com and spend some time networking and building up your profile. Not only is this enjoyable but it could drive a great deal of traffic to your site, increasing the chances of obtaining links from an array of sources. Get a bookmarking widget from a site such as addthis.com to make it easy for people to bookmark content from your site.

Conclusion

All the classic advice such as commenting on people blogs, posting in forums and including your link in email signatures are all valid techniques, but remember that the most benefit will come from obtaining links from trustworthy sources. By following the principles outlined here, and having a great deal of patience and diligence, you will be able to create a high ranking successful web site.