Link Building

Posted by Christina on Jul 6th, 2010

Your search engine optimisation is in place, although you have seen improvements to your websites ranking it could still do better, this is where you need to start implementing link building and content creation if you haven't already started.

Content and content promotion

• It is well worth the time and effort to write excellent content instead of just decent content. The more informative, giving real worth to the reader the better. Great content creates more traffic and interest in your website. It shows off your expertise in your industry, creating trust in your products and services. If other's rate what you are saying they may even link to you. I have found a number of articles I have written for our blog or for our clients websites and blogs have seen an increase in traffic and inbound links.
• If you think you have discovered something unique, write about it and use social media to promote your article.
• I would always recommend keeping the article on your own website and use services like Technorati, Twitter, Facebook, and anywhere else you can publish your sites RSS feed to promote the article. Once the visitors are on your website give them an opportunity to bookmark or share your content via social media.
• Keep advertising, such as Adwords to a minimum and preferable under the fold. Your aim is to get links and other web owners want to link to great content not making you money from adverts.
• Do not hide the relationship between the content and the commercial aspect of your website you could end up looking deceitful.

Quality Directories

• Good quality directories still work. Ensure they are human edited, avoiding directories that allow every submission in.
• If you can not be bothered hunting around the web for quality directories you can always use an SEO tool such as WebCEO helping you do auto submissions to many directories. It also has lists of directories you will need to do manual submissions to.
• A couple of general directories you may wish to look into are:-

1. DMOZ
2. Yahoo! Directory
3. About.com
4. Best of the web
5. Free Index

Blogging

• I have found guest blogging seems to really help bring in traffic and create quality inbound links. It is also a good way to create brand awareness. Make sure the website you are going to guest blog for is relevant to your website and is of a high quality. If you create a good relationship with a complementary website or blog you can start getting great content for your own website as well.

Linking

• There is nothing wrong with reciprocal linking, yet website owners have become more reluctant to do this. It is ok to reciprocal link but ensure you investigate the website where the link will be placed, make sure it is reputable and of high quality and relevant to your website.
• Many Search Engine Optimisation Consultants will tell you not to purchase links, it comes under the heading Black Hat SEO. Google also do not like purchased links and say they can detect them. It is entirely up to you if you wish to start off with purchased links then work on acquiring links for yourself and removing the purchased links as you go. I have never purchased links so have not tested whether they work.
• Keep comprehensive records of your link building campaign, how do you know what is working and how many links you are gaining through different avenues without keeping records.
• Ensure the site you want a link from is of a high quality, high ranking website with relevant content or same topic as yours. Gaining Anchor Text within their website using your keywords is better than being listed on a links page with hundreds of other companies.
• One link from a highly ranked website is far better than hundreds of links from low ranked websites.
• Evaluating the trust of a website involves reviewing its link neighbourhood to see what other trusted sites link to it. More links from other trusted sites would convey more trust. MozTrust at SeoMoz is a very useful tool for a quicker way of finding out a websites trust rank.
• Source Diversity is also important, get links from directories, social media sites, university sites, media websites and social bookmarking sites etc.
• Check out who is linking to your competition and see if you can also get a link.
• The more outbound links a page has the less valuable it is.

Don't Spam

• Search engines (like Google) mostly update their algorithms to do one of two things: to increase the relevance of the search results and to battle spam in their index. If you keep things relevant and avoid spam tactics, your rankings should remain intact as long as there is not a fundamental shift in how websites and pages are ranked.

If anyone thinks I've missed something or even got something wrong your comments would be appreciated.

COMMENTS (0) Jul 6th, 2010