Feb

Link Building Basics

Link building an important step in any search engine optimization plan. Many people take the time to research and build a website, but don’t take the time to promote their website. One of the most common mistakes people make is making a huge list of outgoing links, but they never get links from others to their own site.

It is nice to give your readers resources that point away from your site, but it is even nicer when someone will build links back to you. When you build back links to your site, it becomes stronger, making it easier to be seen in search engine results.

When a search engine sees a lot of incoming links to your site, it looks at that and sees it as a relevant website, since many people are pointing to it. Link building is just as important as effective SEO, and should not be a step that anyone ignores.

So how do you build back links? Where do you get back links from? There are a lot of different places where you can gain back links.

Ask other similar websites if they’d like to exchange links.
Write articles and submit them to directories, adding in your links.
Submit your website to directories.
Create special pages on Squidoo pages or Hub pages, adding in back links to your site.
Join “on-line carnivals” where similar topics come together and link to each other.
Add your link as your signature on forums and message boards.
Send out a press release to gain back links
Comment on other relevant websites and blogs to get back links.

Regardless of where the back links come from, it is also important to remember to use relevant anchor text link that leads back to your site. You’ll want to target your main key phrase or keyword.

When it comes to building your back links, you should keep a few things in mind. First, you want as many quality incoming links as possible. Don’t waste your time on junk sites, or sites that are considered “bad neighborhoods.” Link farms, gambling, or porn sites are all bad ideas and would not provide a quality back link. Additionally, look for back linking opportunities that are relevant to your content. If your site is about baking, find other baking sites to exchange links with. This will help bring traffic that actually has an interest in the content of your site.

When it comes to gaining visibility for your website, link building is an optimum step you don’t want to skip. Don’t make the mistake of overlooking the value of link building.

One last tip, while link exchanges will help build your links, one way links are even better! If you can get incoming links to your site, while not having to link back to the site linking into you, these are seen as stronger links. In fact, some of the larger link exchanges can acutally even hinder your link building capabilities, because they are seen as “spam” exchanges and not as real link building efforts.