Link building is basically a method of creating inbound links to one’s own website. This process is one of the most essential ingredients in getting high rankings for your website on major search engines. It is also arguably the most difficult and time-consuming part of Search Engine Marketing. Strategizing your link building procedure is all about substantiating your presence in the pre-existing online marketplace that is based around your industry sector. Proper link building is not just about good content development, but it is also about targeted link requests and selective directory submissions.

There are two main goals for undertaking link building. You can either use it for building direct click-through traffic or you can use it for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It should be noted here that the sole purpose of search engine optimization based link building is to achieve higher rankings, quite unlike the aim of most SEO campaigns, which is just to create more traffic for the site. Keeping this in mind, you need to be able to distinguish between types of links and the purposes which are best suited to each of them. Some links work the best for SEO, while some links are better at generating traffic, and some are good for both purposes. While it is obvious that the links which are good for both SEO and traffic are great, it is not necessary that if a link can get you good traffic, it will be good for your rankings too.

Advantages of Link Building

In the current scenario, links have become the one of the most essential elements in the website building process. You can judge the importance of getting good links by the fact that today, there are numerous companies that are dedicated to selling links to websites. Also, there are companies which are willing to do your entire website’s link-building, but at a price of course.

There are numerous reasons for taking link-building seriously if you want your site to be a success and retain your position at the top. Link building will boost your website’s sales by getting high quality traffic from relevant websites and other sources. Also, when your website builds a decent repository of quality incoming links, it will be seen as a valuable information resource by the users as well as the search engine crawlers. Because of this, your site will obtain a wider exposure from search engines and your website will be indexed more often by search engines. So, when you are link-building for your website you are actually creating awareness about your site as well as increasing its credibility and visibility points.

Planning Your Link-Building Strategy

1. Content is KING: You can’t substitute good, well-written content with anything else. Original, high quality content accessible to search engines is the key to high search rankings as well as increasing link popularity for your site. If your web pages contain useless information meant just for the sake of indexing, other sites won’t even bother linking to you. Also, for the purpose of increasing your product’s sales through your website, make sure the written copy is purposeful and in tune with your sales proposition. If you don’t have the time or creativity to write a good copy, hire good quality freelance writers who can do the job well for you.
2. Work on your anchor text: Search engines tend to look at the anchor text in links. So target you keywords, but also try to vary your anchor text a lot. Even a few “Click Here!” and “Best Offer!” can work wonders for your site.
3. Build your site target list: Try to understand the marketplace your website will serve and rank its different related sectors according to their importance to your business niche. Then look for the niche websites related to your site from which you can get links. Start with a few important niches, work your way up to a minimum of 250-300 such websites and focus your efforts on these sites to keep generating links from them.
4. Issue online press releases: This is a good way to approach numerous media sites in a single approach. When you submit your release to a certain newswire, you are actually distributing your news to a large number of editors and journalists across the globe. But a very smart way to getting media’s attention faster is to use services like URL Wire, which boasts of a huge and impressive list of thousands of website reviewers, writers and journalists.
5. Build links using directories: Although procuring deep links is normally not possible with this slow method of link-building, you can get many cheap low quality links. Directory submissions are being done by various Link Builders and specialized SEOs, who work with four kinds of directories: free, niche, reciprocal required and pay-for-inclusion directories. You can also use one of the many SEO friendly general directories available online and that too free of cost.
6. Reciprocal Link Building: An old and time-tested way of building links by the method of exchanging. But this method proves to be effective only if you have 30 or more websites which provide you with good quality links. Also, I would not really recommend Reciprocal Link Programs.
7. Get bloggers to work for you: You can pay bloggers to blog abut your business and provide links to your site in his blogs. Since a blog post gets buried down over time in the blog structure, it is always good to get the word out about your site.
8. Submit articles: This is one of the best ways to build traffic, but can take a long time to take effect. Write an article which would include links to your website within the text itself, or in the related resource section. If you can’t do this yourself, get a professional writer to do it for you and have a specialist submit these articles to article directories.
9. Write reviews and testimonials: You can write and send testimonials to your SEOs, web developers, web hosts and your favorite websites too. There is a good probability that these people would publish what you write on their sites and even link back to you. Just ensure that you leave your name and your website link at the end of each submitted article.
10. Monitor the changes and evaluate the benefits: This is not just about counting the number of links you manage to accumulate for your site. What You also need to measure is the amount of benefit it is bringing to your business. Observe and make a note of the changes that these actions have caused, in terms of the amount of increase in traffic, the links which get you the maximum traffic and you overall increase in sales as a result. This will help you focus in the right direction as well as help you in formulating future strategies for your website.