The Importance of Link Building for SEO
Link building is another one of those internet marketing topics that can frighten the average business owner. For people who do not work in the Internet industry, the idea of actually “building links” is a foreign concept that you might not fully understand. In order to explain link building, you have to know what a link is. A link is anything such as words, texts, or a graphic that when clicked, directs you to another website on the Internet. Link building is the process of increasing the number of other websites that feature links to your website. The more routes to your website the easier it is to find! Why is link-building important? There is a ton of information on the Internet, and many websites cover the same topic, so search engines have to use various factors to decide which pages are the best ones on a given subject. One of the ways they do this is by evaluating the quality of other websites that link to your website. What do links mean to a search engine?
- Trust factor – Links are one indication that your website has been around for long enough to build that many links, and therefore earns a certain level of trust.
- An indication of relevance – When other companies trust you enough to link to your site, this generally indicates you have a useful site with relevant information.
- A measure of popularity – Links are often a sign of a popular website, and search engines look at the popularity as an indicator that the website has good, useful information.
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Consider this Scenario Ok, so pretend you are Google for a moment and someone types in the phrase “oil spill news.” Among the sites for consideration is a nice-looking website with a handful of links back to it, as well as a similar-sized website with 1,500 links pointing back to it. If you knew nothing else about these sites, it would be a logical assumption that the site with more links was probably a better resource on the subject. Now, links alone do not promise rankings. And link building can be manipulated in negative ways so it is not simply a game of quantity over quality. However, it is a very important aspect of how your site fares on search engines and should not be overlooked as part of your internet marketing plan.
How to build backlinks to your website!
5 Tips for Getting Started In Link Building
We explained why it is important to build links to your website. But after reading that post you are probably wondering “How, exactly, can I get started building links to my site?” To be honest, there is no surefire, quick way to build up tons of links in a very short amount of time. And you should be very wary of any person, company or service who tells you they can build massive amounts of links with very little effort because those methods are not usually above board. (Some of these people just flood chat rooms with your link and will get you listed as spam) With that said, there are some ways that you can start building links now so that you will continually increase the number of sites that link back to yours. Here are five ways you can get started:
- Be smart with anchor text. Anchor text refers to the words that you click on in order to be directed to another site. Rather than using yourwebsite.com as the anchor text, you can use words that refer to your product and make sense in the context where the link is found. Also “click here” isn’t advised.
- Try content syndication. Syndication refers to when someone uses an article, blog post or news item you wrote and publishes it on their site. When they give credit to the source, they will link back to your site.
- Directories can also be a great way to build links. The Yahoo Directory is a great one, or you can try to find one that features topics related to your product or service.
- Bookmarks. Sites such as Digg and Delicious allow people to share their bookmarks with one another, allowing people to bookmark and share your site. This works best if you have a particularly interesting picture, blog post, or event on your site that people would like to talk about.
- Ask clients, associates and organizations to put a link to your website on theirs. When you work with people, it is a good idea to see if it would be possible to use the relationship for link-building. Also, for any organizations in which you are a member, ask the people in charge what it would take to get your link on their site, and then see if that is feasible for you.
Aim for Quality over Quantity
I’ll share a quick story with you to demonstrate why quality trumps quantity in link building. A client of mine in the IT business has a very large company that they serve. I suggested they request a link in the footer of their very popular and well-established site saying “Technology consulting by ABC…” And within a few weeks, our client moved up quickly in the rankings. Now, this internet marketing strategy does not yield the same results every time. However, it does demonstrate that when Google, Yahoo and Bing find a link to your site on another site they trust, this helps your credibility in the online world. Learn more about how you can take your business to the next level and how ePresence can provide you with a comprehensive mix of SEO tools and techniques.
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