Link Building – The Process

An effectively linked website can do your online business a world of good, both in terms of revenues and traffic. Adopt the following approach to go about the process of link building for your optimisation campaign:

1. Run a search query for your most important keywords, and have a look at the top 20 sites that feature on SERPs. Most of these sites will be your competitors'. You can also pick and choose website submitted on online directories like DMOZ or Yahoo.
   
2. Scan the websites these top-ranked sites have linked to, and if you find them worthwhile, use them in your campaign as well. To do this, you can either use freely available web tools, or the backlink command provided for in directories.
3. Also check the sites that link to your competitors' sites. It'll be easy to get into link exchange with them, as you are part of the same industry as your rivals.
4. Have a look at every website that you have shortlisted. Identify the pros and cons of their web pages, and only then take the next step.
5. Send a link proposal through email, clearly stating the facts about your site and business. Write the email in an impelling manner so that the site's webmaster sees reason in linking to your site.
   

Once you have adhered to this step-by-step process, keep a track of which sites are actually replying back, and which of them are interested in getting into link exchange with you. Also monitor the incoming links of your site, so that you can do away with the ones that can be harmful for your site's prospects on search engines.

Rate Websites for Linking

As optimisers, we come across plethora of options with regard to linking. However, we need to be judicious enough to understand the value of a link or the website it comes from.

The following points will help you decide if a link is worth pursuing:

1. The site should allow you to use anchor text as per your choice, so that you get to squeeze in your most important keywords therein.
2. Ensure that the link does not redirect to any other link. Avoid Javascript-based links as they are basically useless for optimisation purposes.
3. Check the Meta Robots Tag of the page. The page will not be indexed by search engines if this tag contains 'NOINDEX'. Such links will obviously not benefit your website.
4. Check the PageRank (PR) of the page you are linking to. Apart from that, also find out the number of backlinks the page has. All these factors are taken into consideration by search engines before determining PageRanks. Too many backlinks on your linking page can ruin the prospects of your own page.
5. Use online resources to find out about the traffic driven to the web page you want to link to. This will help you decide if such a link will be useful.
6. Find out if links are displayed in the cached version of the page? If not, then the page is using negative tactics to keep search engine spiders from identifying its outgoing links.
7. The page should not have a 'rel=NOFOLLOW' attribute, because most search engines will not follow such links.

Go through this checklist before you link to a website. Opt for links that can actually bolster your SEO campaign, and let go of the useless ones.

Essential Link Building Tips for your Site's Optimisation

A sound link building campaign can do a world of good for your online business. However, it is imperative that you are well-informed about the basic concepts related to the same.

The following tips will help you get a clearer picture of how to go about enhancing your link popularity :

# PageRank – If you are catering mainly to Google, PageRank or PR is an essential feature to be taken into consideration. The higher the PR of pages linking to you, the more value your site will get from them.

# Relevance – When other sites give links to your site, it simply means they are 'voting' for you. Therefore, the relevance of such sites to your product/service, business or industry at large, is quite significant. Try and get links from pages that have content related to your website.

# Links on Linking Page – If you go by Google's PageRank algorithm, the value of each link is equal to the PR of that page divided by the total number of outgoing links on that page. Therefore, it is advisable to get links from pages that have less number of outgoing links. Do this little evaluation before hunting for pages with high PR, because if they have too many outgoing links, they'll be of practically no value.

# Dynamic Link Pages – Link pages that are generated dynamically take time in getting indexed by search engines. Such pages will actually not do any good to your site.

My experience tells me that it is better to stay away from framed sites or redirected links. Even if they will add up to the quantity of inbound links your site has, they can never actually help in the process of optimisation and better ranking of your web pages.

Wanna get into Quality Link Building?

Every online business dreams of reaching the top of search engine rankings, so as to rake in more traffic and increased revenues from this extremely lucrative medium. When we talk of SEO, link building is one such technique that can get you desired results.

If you want to popularise your website by linking it up with other relevant websites, the best way is to get into quality link building. Listed below are the most common sources of getting traffic to your site through links:

Article Submission – Submit articles in ezines and other online resource banks. These articles should be related to your product or service and should be in accordance with guidelines set by the article directory in question.

Directory Submission – Submit your site's URL to directories like DMOZ and Yahoo, among others, to get targeted traffic back to your site.

Press Releases – Tell the world about the latest developments in fields related to your business by submitting Press Releases in specified directories.

Blogs – Visit popular blogs and write 'comments' on current issues related to your business.

Forums – Participate in online discussions and express your views about issues talked about thereon.

Social Bookmarking – Join social networks and let people know about your business.

Classifieds – Create simple and appealing ads and submit them as classified listings to get dedicated traffic back to your own site.

When we talk of quality in link building, it simply means the quality of websites that point towards your site. Getting links from popular or established online resources or directories will stand your business in good stead.

The Benefits of Being Linked Up

In my last blog, I had talked about 'Link Popularity', a concept that helps determine the popularity of a website, as vouched for by other external web pages. However, why should we get into link building in the first place? What are the benefits we can derive out of the process of link exchange?

First and foremost, links get traffic. When websites point to your site, they automatically divert their visitors to you. This increases your traffic influx, and can also lead to a improvement in your sales revenues. If you target Google as your primary search engine, then links can help you get better PageRank or PR. This trademarked algorithm takes quality and quantity of incoming links into consideration when calculating the PR of a page.

Links can also help you get your web pages indexed faster on a search engine result page. Even if your pages are deeply nested in your site structure, they can be easily crawled if other websites point towards them. Lastly, links make crawling of dynamic web pages faster. Even though the content of such pages change frequently, their links can lead to faster indexing by search engine spiders.

In case you thought link building is just another SEO service, think again. Its benefits are far greater than what's 'visible' to the eye. Focus your search engine marketing campaign on this technique, and you will never regret your decision!

Enhance Web Popularity by Establishing Links

When we discuss link building as a search engine optimisation tool, it is but essential to talk about Link Popularity. This term refers to a site's popularity with regard to the number (and quality) of links pointing to it from other websites.

One of the most effective means of procuring high search engine rankings, link building will be successful only if other 'entities' in the online marketplace cast a 'vote' for your website. When a site points at one of your web pages, it means that it wants its users to visit that page. In doing so, it automatically enhances the popularity of your site.

As discussed in the previous post, links should be established with sites that have some relevance to your content, or business in general. For example, if you run an online movie shop, it will be extremely beneficial if you are linked to sites related to movies (studios, magazines, film sites, etc.).

Apart from giving a boost to your web traffic, link popularity will save a lot of your time and money that would have otherwise been spent on promotional tactics. As more and more sites link to you, search engine spiders will be able to crawl and index your web pages with minimal efforts.

A word of caution here! Do not encourage links coming from link farms or banned sites/networks. Although it is not possible for you to stop people from linking to your site, you can always take certain precautionary measures to control the situation.

Linking and SE Ranking – The Unbreakable Bond

Link building is one of the most essential services of organic search engine optimisation. A formidable link exchange programme can rake in backlinks, targeted traffic and eventually, sales for web businesses. Your links are considered as 'votes' – the more, the better!

Links can be of two types – inward and outward. The former comprises web links that divert users from other sites to your site, and the latter means links that you put up on your website to send visitors to some other website.

When you get into online link exchange, it is imperative that you choose websites that have some relevancy to your business, products or services. It'll be great if the content on that site has keywords similar to your own site. In fact, getting links from irrelevant online entities can lead to supplementing or blacklisting of your site.

Through this blog, I intend to discuss various concepts related to link building and the benefits thereon. The next post will be an introduction to the concept of link popularity and the means of going about it. Watch this space!