SEO Link-Building Strategy - The Do’s and Don’ts!
SEO Link-Building Strategy - The Do’s and Don’ts!
By Steven Chappell
Any Internet marketer worth their salt will know that one of the most important aspects of SEO is link-building. Specifically, we are talking about incoming links or backlinks, which are basically links from relevant websites that lead to your website, and building these links is one of the most powerful tools you can use to promote your site, because if other websites, particularly high ranking ones consider your website important enough to link to, then so will the search engines.
In fact, Backlinks are the life blood of your website, and without them, you might as well have a website written in hieroglyphics. Part of the Algorithm for ranking your website is determined by the number and quality of the backlinks to your site, and the more quality backlinks you have, the more traffic your site will get.
When it comes to employing a link-building strategy though, there are certain things that you should do, and certain things that you should not.
Firstly, lets look at what you should avoid.
Automated link-building software:
On the surface, this might seem like a good idea, as it could take all the hard work out of building your backlinks. However, there is a need for caution. Most of the time, the software works by getting you to search for a specific term, which results in a list of websites that the software then scans for email addresses. An automatically generated email is then sent to each of these addresses. Unfortunately, due to the way the emails are generated, most of them tend to be flagged as Spam. The results can be very disappointing and more importantly, can adversely effect your reputation and your ranking. In short, Automated link-building software should be avoided like the plague.
Link Farms:
Also known as free-for-all links, which are a collection of random, indiscriminate hyperlinks on a specifically designed web page with the sole purpose of increasing the search engine rankings. Many novice webmasters submit their sites to these link-farms with the hope that they will receive thousands of backlinks to their site, but unfortunately these links don’t generate any real traffic nor do they increase your ranking. On the contrary, by using these link-farms, not only will you receive a ton of junk mail in your inbox, but your site will probably get blacklisted, as Google and probably most other reputable search engines will consider these links as Spam.
Reciprocal Linking:
Now this one is actually a “Do”, AND a “Dont”, as Reciprocal linking can be an important element in your linking strategy and can have a good effect on your ranking. Otherwise know as link exchanging, it basically involves swapping links between two sites in the hope that both rankings will increase. While this method can be very effective if you can get the right partners as it were to exchange links, it can backfire badly if you send email to unsuspecting webmasters requesting link exchanges, as this could also result in getting your site blacklisted as Spam. Also, for the most part, reciprocal links are rejected by most experienced webmasters for a variety of reasons which we wont go into here. So tread with caution when employing reciprocal linking.
Now that we have covered some of the negative aspects of link-building, lets now look at some of the positive ones.
Article submission:
Writing articles can be a great way to boost your ranking and gain credibility in your given area of expertise. Every time you write an article, be sure to leave a link back to your website at the bottom of your article page, as this is a great way to build backlinks without any adverse side effects.
Posting Blog comments:
There are many blogs out there with high PR rankings. When you find a blog that is relative to your site, then post a useful and positive comment leaving a link to your website at the end of it. Don’t underestimate this technique, as it really can help you build some quality backlinks and increase your ranking.
Manual Directory Submission:
Submitting to web directories is a vital aspect of your link building strategy, and there are thousands of directories on the Internet, but for obvious reasons, you wont submit to all of them, nor would you want to use any submission software, unless it is tailored to specific directories.
Submitting your site to directories can have an amazing effect, as it can result in a massive stream of traffic and increase your ranking. Some of the top directories that you should use are Dmoz, Yahoo, Lii, Stpt, and business. Bear in mind that most directories require an annual fee, but some are free, in fact the directory with the highest ILQ (Inbound link quality) rating of 5.8 million inbound links is Dmoz.org, and its free.
One thing that you need to be aware of, is that Google actually measures the quality of backlinks to your site, taking into account the importance of each link. So it is not just about gaining a lot of backlinks, but gaining a lot of relevant high quality backlinks.
One nice little tool that you may find helpful in this regard is part of Google’s toolbar and is appropriately entitled, PageRank. When you view any site, the PageRank bar displays white for PR0 and increments of green as you go up the rank to 10. So if you see the PageRank bar showing full green, then you will know that you have came across a PR10 page. In fact when viewing a page, including your own, all you need to do is hover your mouse over the PageRank tool, and it will instantly tell you the PR of that site. You can see how helpful this little tool can be in helping you find relevant sites with a high Pagerank which you can then make an effort to link to, as that will increase your PageRank.
As you can see, there is quite a bit involved when it comes to your link-building strategy, and as an Internet marketer, I have come to appreciate that it is an ongoing process, but one that is definitely worth the effort.
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