Link Building In search engine optimization, “off page factors” have become more and more important as they relate to rankings. In particular, solid link popularity can literally make or break a site with the search engines.
Link building is a program of seeking out and building up the link popularity of a site from other relevant and authority sites. It also includes finding relevant sites to offer as a resource to visitors to your site. This can be a very time-consuming process as it involves many hours of research.
Building links is one of the most important factors in getting top placement on major search engine machine. If done correctly, increasing your linkage will:
Increase your traffic significantly
Improve your visibility in the search engines
Provide an added resource to your website
Save you a lot of advertising money
What is Link Popularity?
Link popularity refers to the number and quality of links pointing to your site from other sites on the Web. These other sites consider your site important to link to. So, in the engine's view, your site is considered important as well.
The largest drawback in building one's link popularity well is TIME. It takes time to:
Find the websites to link with
Make the link request
Wait on those link requests
Process, organize, and manage the links
Have the search engine find or spider your link partners
Ways to build link popularity for a website
Email or contact the Web master of a site that is complementary but generally not competitive to your own. You ask them to link to your site while outlining the benefits of doing so. You would generally offer to link back to them in exchange for this courtesy. Be sure you have developed genuine content on your Web site of interest to the trading partner. Explain the advantages to them and to their visitors by providing a link to your content. Tell them where the link on your site will be or set the link up in advance with the stipulation that you'll be glad to leave it there if they'll add a link to you in kind. Take the time to look over their site and then suggest where a link to you might be appropriate.
Here's the simple means to find those good links. Go to the major search engines. Search for your target keywords. Look at the pages that appear in the top results. Now visit those pages and ask the site owners if they will link to you. Not everyone will, especially sites that are extremely competitive with you. However, there will be non-competitive sites that will link to you -- especially if you offer to link back. Why is this system good? By searching for your target keywords, you'll find the pages that the search engines themselves are telling you are good, as evidenced by the fact that they rank well. Hence, links from these pages are more important -- and important for the terms you are interested in -- than links from other pages.
When asking for a link:
ALWAYS have a link already put on your own site BEFORE you ask for a link in return and give the location of the link. It's harder to say no if you can provide the URL of where their link is.
ALWAYS give them the exact link text to use, even going so far as to put it in HTML so they can just cut/paste it onto their page.
MAKE SURE they actually have a links page!
GIVE THEM as much information as needed in order to make it easy for them to link to you. If they have a big site that's divided into sections, give them the exact URL of where your site would fit in. Then, provide the HTML for the link to your site.
Pre-qualify the people you solicit for reciprocal links. They must have links from other sites like yours, and they must have the ability to make changes to their own site. If they don't respond to your solicitation, at most send ONE second request. Otherwise move on and take their site off of yours. Send a thank you note if they give you a reciprocal link.
Check the link popularity of your competitors, and find out who are linking to them. Contact those Web sites, and ask them to link to you in return for a reciprocal link.
Search the sites of the people who have linked to you for other possible link partners.
Manually search for Web sites that have the same theme as your Web site. When requesting a link, make sure to highlight what your site has to offer their visitors and why they should link to it. A compelling case will increase your success.
Review any Web site to which you want to link *before* writing to its Web master asking for a link. Like all SEO, do it manually. Automating the task is asking for trouble, especially if you haven't reviewed the site before asking for the link.
If you've moved your site and you're asking those who have linked to you to change to your new URL, give them as much information as possible.
Types of Links
Inbound Link or Back links
One-way Link
Reciprocal Link
Inbound Links or Backlinks
Are links that point to your site from sites other than your own. Good inbound links are crucial if you want to get high search engine rankings. If your website doesn't have the right inbound links then it will be very difficult to get high rankings.
One-Way Links
One-way linking is getting a link from another site without linking back to that website. One way links are very valuable.
An effective way to build this type of one-way linking is by distributing articles through content sites and article directories. These articles generally contain an About The Author box that contains the one-way link back to the author's URL. When publishers use these articles, those one-way links help authors increase their page rank.
Reciprocal Links
A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms to rank websites for relevancy.
Web Directory
A web directory or link directory is a directory on the Word Wide WEb . It specializes in linking to other websites and categorizing those links.
A web directory is not a search engine, and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords, instead it lists web sites by category and subcategory. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site, rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only one or two categories. Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.
Some directories are very general in scope and list websites across a wide range of categories, regions and languages. But there are also a large number of niche directories, which focus on restricted regions, single languages, or specialist sectors. One type of niche directory with a large number of sites in existence, is the shopping directory for example. Shopping directories specialize in the listing of retail e-commerce sites.
Examples of well known, general, web directories are Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory (ODP). ODP is significant due to its extensive categorization and large number of listings and its free availability for use by other directories and search engines.
A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory.
Human-edited directories are often targeted by SEOs on the basis that links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines. Some directories may prevent search engines from rating a displayed link by using redirects or other techniques.
Many human-edited directories, including the Open Directory Project and the World Wide Web Virtual Library, are edited by volunteers, who are often experts in particular categories. These directories are sometimes criticized due to long delays in approving submissions, or for rigid organizational structures and disputes among volunteer editors.
General Directory vs Niche Directory
The inbound links to the niche directory are more focused on topics and would likely come from a larger variety of websites than a subcategory of a general directory. A niche directory is likely to attract links of greater importance and authority over the long term; general directory subcategories are less likely to attract some attention.
Submitting to Directories
Preparation
You should prepare before submitting to any directory. This preparation means that you have written a 15 word or less description of your entire web site. That description should make use of the two or three key terms that you hope to be found for.
Consider keyword research to help determine the best keyword phrases for your site rather than guessing at what these terms might be.
It is essential that the description you write not make use of marketing language. So, if you sold shoes and wanted to be found for terms such as "athletic shoes" and "running shoes," you might write a "just the facts" description like this:
Purchase athletic shoes, running shoes, hiking boots and other footwear plus try our cross country trail finder.
You would not want a description like this, which is full of marketing hype, and which editors dislike:
World's LARGEST online shoe store with the best prices from the greatest brands!!!!
Forums
An internet forum is a web application which provides for discussion, often in conjunction with on line communities. There are forums on every subject on the web that give users a chance to research questions or ask their own.
It is another way to build up link popularity that is by posting a good topic, related topic of course, then including your URL in your signature. This provides the users an access to your website depending on whether they liked your post or not.
Membership
Anonymous forums may offer full anonymity or pseudonymity, allowing posts without registration. Email authentication and trip codes are often used to prevent comment spam on such forums.
Registered members of a forum, who are identified by unique user name, may have additional privileges, such as the ability to edit their previous posts, start new topics, and control their individual settings and profiles. The profiles tend to include graphical avatars and signature blocks, that may contain URLs to their website, which are appended to their future posts, sometimes consisting of elaborate shout boxes. Members also have the ability to send private messages to each other. In certain cases, members have been given the ability to close their own topics, edit previously posted comments, or delete posts in topics they have started.
Articles
Article submission is also referred to as article marketing. The way that this SEO technique works is when you decide to pay a company to have articles written for you, or if you decide that you have enough knowledge on the subject to write them yourself. Once you have the articles written that you are interested using for your company or whatever area you are interested in trying to promote, you will then submit your articles to directories. The entire concept of article submission is very easy to understand.
Keep in mind that there are a number of different things that you can do to improve the overall success that you have with article submission as the SEO technique that you are interested in using. The most important thing that you will want to take into consideration is that you will want to make sure that your articles have the right amount of keyword density. It is typically recommended for you to have articles which offer two to three percent keyword density. This will help improve the overall search engine, or directory, ranking that your submitted articles will have.
Another one of the most important things that you will want to take into consideration is the fact that your articles should be much more than just keyword dense. While this is very important to the amount of success that you have with article submission, it is also important to keep in mind that the content of your articles is very important as well. Not only should they be well written with perfect grammar, but your submitted articles should also be relevant to the subject which they are about.
Although you may have thought about offering the information that you want included in your articles in a playful manner, chances are that you will find that you will have the most success when you decide to present your information more professionally. This will help you gain the credibility that you need to gain the most success for your company or product.
One of the main benefits that article submission has to offer you is the fact that it is known to be very successful. If you are interested in getting the internet marketing results through one of the best SEO techniques which is out there, then article submission can really do a lot for you. Another one of the main benefits of this marketing solution is the fact that it is known to be very cost effective, which is great for anyone who has a low marketing budget to begin with. Whether you have a large or small business, you very well may find article submission to be one of the best internet marketing solutions for you.
Blogs
A blog is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal on line diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, media and links to websites related to it's topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.
Blogs can be a way of link building under one-way linking. After posting a blog or a topic, a signature can be included where in URLs and description of the authors website is included. Thus, creating a link for those interested, by the topic created by the author, as a resource for more knowledge or product and services.
Summary
Link popularity is a way most search engines determine the importance of your site. When a website link to your site, search engines takes it as a vote for your website. In the past few years, this has greatly helped search engines getting the most relevant result for users.
Recently, with a lot of sites using links to cheat into search engines ranking, major search engines, specially Google have increasingly use and develop new technologies to determine the importance of the links.
So, not all links are treated as equal.
Relevancy of the sites also plays a part. Relevant website will give more value to the linked site. Then there is age in play. Older sites are deemed to be more trustworthy than new sites. Consequently, links from older sites are treated as more valuable too. Website with high link popularity can contribute to adding popularity to your website too.
Directory submission is the oldest way to build your link reputation. There are free Dmoz, free or paid Yahoo Directory, and thousands other directories. Just search for “directory submission” and you have enough work to do for a whole year. Just do directory submission moderately, probably around 20 directories per week, and you can watch your search engine traffic climbing up slowly.
If you have a blog, you can submit it to blog directories as well. Just search for “blog submission”.
Exchanging link with another web master is another way. Termed as “link-exchange”, basically you link to the partner site. In exchange, the partner will put hyperlink in his/her site pointing to yours. As many abuse this technique, Google has degraded the value of link-exchange to virtually non-existant. You might even get penalized if your link partner is considered a “bad website” for Google.
While Google has diminished the value of reciprocal link, Yahoo and MSN are still holding on, though with less value. Even then, it still valuable enough to work on. Just be careful to have only reputable link partners.
To check whether the link partner is bad, just search for “site:www.example.com” in Google (replace example.com with the partner’s website) and see if the pages are indexed.
The most “in” link-building technique now is via article submission. You can write or buy an original article, and include a link to your website on the resource box (a small section after the article, where you introduce yourself and your website).
This is what I mean:
Article here
…
..
.
About the author
Juan Dela Cruz is a contributing writer for example.com, followed by the description of example site.
You can then submit this article to a myriad of article submission sites, for other web masters to put it on their website.
The wonder of article submission is that not only it helps search engine ranking, but also brings in interested visitors who like your articles. This is very targeted traffic, compared with directory submission or link-exchange.
Other link building methods are visiting relevant blogs and leave comments there, as well as joining forums/discussion boards and leaving hyperlink to your site on the signature.
On the other hand, don’t be stingy in linking to others. Be choosy on who you want to link, but don’t hold back if you find a good site that can be useful for your visitors.
