The Importance of Correct Link Building

Most website owners search through thousands of how- to- articles to find the most up-to- date information on Search Engine Optimization. Indeed the first question most internet marketing experts are asked is "how do I drive more traffic to my website?" These articles are informative, but they often fail to mention the importance of correct Link Building. There is lots of information on the web about the importance of link building; however, they are contradictory and often scattered.  Remember, a well executed link building or link popularity strategy can increase you website ranking. To accomplish this you need a good quantity of links pointing to your site from quality websites.

Link Building process can be difficult and tedious work. Mistakes can place your site in the search engines black listed category, or eliminate your site from their indexes completely. Investing in an online service will pay off in the long run. Most link building online services will create a good link building strategy that will target links from relevant and highly ranked sites.  A good online service must ensure that all of your pages are optimized for relevant keyword phrases and contain quality incoming links.

A well executed Link Building Strategy should include the following:

Relevancy:  While relevancy is very important, new studies show that having a mix of links covering multiple topics of interest from strong, relevant sites and general family friendly sites is the most effective approach.

Stay steady:  Maintain a consistent flow of incoming links to become a trusted source to Google.  Google often places a red flag on sites that have a spike in incoming links and all of a sudden stop or slow down. In order for Google to accept a site as credible, you must continue a new campaign for several months for Google to "trust" that the links are natural and organic.

Create deep links:  To ensure that the best converting page is what ranks the highest in the search engine result page, and when focusing on specific keywords within link building campaign, it is generally best to link to the most relevant page for the particular keyword. For instance, the homepage or a subpage within your site that has been optimized for that particular term or subject. However, content is still the most important aspect of link building. You need to have informative and relevant content that is of value to the reader in order to be seen as authority on the subject you are trying to be ranked for. If you have pages within your site that Google hasn't indexed, you aren't getting credit for the content on those pages!  Ensure you are getting indexed by the search engines by creating "deep links" into each page within your site. This will increase your number of indexed pages and your old content will still appear relevant, which could save you a lot of time and money.

Diversify anchor text:  Various people that are naturally linked to your site have different anchor text.  Therefore, it is smart to use multiple keywords within your link building strategy and anchor text to create a more natural link. This can be accomplished by using slight variations of keyword phrases and changing them from time to time.

Mix Link Types: Create links that are natural looking as possible with a healthy portfolio of press releases, blogs, articles, directories and bookmarks. Make sure to include some high quality links as well as other "normal "links for a natural looking link portfolio. Your link building strategy will make or break your site. An organic backlink portfolio is diverse and consists of multiple link types. Google designed its algorithm around links and that's how it determines how important a site is. Through links, Google allows the web community to essentially "vote" for each other. Since each link counts as a vote, it's important to ensure your votes are as natural and organic as possible.

Give it time: During recent years Google deems the age of websites as more important due to the problems it has encountered with spammers. An effective link building campaign takes about 3-6 month. Some new links that grow over time will start showing authority and pass value to your site. Link age is one of the most important factors when evaluating the effectiveness of a particular link campaign. Give your links time to grow importance, achieve full indexing and give your site that boost you are looking for.

High Ranking links may not be as important:  Google uses a scale called Page Rank (PR) where a numerical value of 0-10 is given to show the importance of the website/page. Sites with higher PR values are generally deemed more valuable in link building. However, there are many other variables in link building that can give value to a website; for instance, the age of the domain, the number of outbound links on that page, daily hits and time on site, number of indexed pages, number of incoming indexed links and other factors. Remember, building links on pages that are SEO friendly and related to your keywords and topics could be more important than what the Google toolbar is telling you.

The most important concept to take away from this article is that when it comes to link building, diversity is the most important factor. Creating a high quality link is important as well; however make it  as organic and natural as possible. As a website owner, you need to stay ahead of your competitors. Look into hiring an online service to help you stay above the competition in this ever changing industry.