Today, all the SEO specialists talk about is link building. But what does it really mean and how do you do it effectively.
In very basic terms, link building is the strategic process of getting other websites and blogs to vote for your website or specific pages of your website. If you can convince authoritative websites to link to your website (this is known as a backlink), the search engines perceive that your site (or at least the pages that are linked to) are more valuable, hence they are more likely to rank them higher in their index.
There is a debate between SEO experts as to whether your site will appear more credible if it has a greater quantity of backlinks vs. a smaller number of high quality links. The consensus is that a few links from higher quality (authoritative websites) will have a greater impact than many links from low quality websites. This seems to be more true on Google than MSN, which seems to give a high value to the raw number of backlinks.
So how do you get backlinks? There are several easy options:
1. Register your site on directories. Obviously, higher quality, human edited directories like directory.yahoo.com and www.dmoz.org are worth a lot. However, there are many many directories on the web and, in very general terms, a listing on most of them will increase your website's credibility and, possibly your position on the search engine results.
As noted above, not all directory listings have the same value. You definitely should target human edited directories like Yahoo and DMOZ, but don't stop there. In our experience, most directories that require payment for inclusion have value. It is very important to look for directories of local businesses as well as they tend to have value - at least when you are trying to promote the website of a local business.
2. Write articles. The more often (and the more places) you publish articles on your area of expertise, the better. Each article will give you credit as the author and link back to your website. In many cases, you can also including links to internal pages of your website.
3. Write blogs. If you have a blog, it is a great place to talk about your expertise and link to specific pages on your website. In some cases, you can post articles on other people's blogs with links back to your website.
4. Try to get listed in the websites of local organizations that you belong to or charitable organizations that you give to. Ask for a listing with a link to your website.
5. Contact owners of other websites that deal with subjects related to your expertise. Ask them to link to your website or to specific pages of your website.
6. Contact your friends and colleagues and ask them to link back to your website. Many of them will. In some cases, you will have to provide a link to their website in exchange. Don't rely too heavily on straight link exchanges, however, as the search engines may see this as a link building scheme and discount its value.
7. Pay for links. This is very controversial and there are several businesses out there that are in this business. It is best to do it on your own and very quietly. You do not want links to appear to be paid for or they will appear to the search engines as paid ads and not have any SEO value. I will discuss this topic in much more detail in a future article.
8. Be careful that you don't trade links with "link farms". More about this in future articles too.
OK, let's say you have an opportunity to get a link back to your website. How do you do it? Of course, the best way is to hyperlink actual text that is descriptive of the page that you want to link to. So, for example, if I wanted to link to http://www.ppl-law.com/, I would hyperlink the following words "Philadelphia personal injury lawyers." The words that are hyperlinked are known as "anchor text". Sometimes you can't actually hyperlink the specific words that you want to use. In that case, it is OK to have those words near the actual link even if they are not used as anchor text.
Another thing to consider is that you should not just link to the home page of the website you want to promote. It really helps to link into the internal pages. So to use the same target website, you might want to hyperlink the words "Philadelphia medical malpractice lawyers" to http://www.ppl-law.com/medical_malpractice.html (the medical malpractice page of the website).
Don't just start a link building campaign because I say to do it. Think about why you are doing it. Pretend that SEO doesn't exist. On a perfect World Wide Web, other website owners would naturally want to link to your site if it contains great information that they believe would benefit their readers. The website owners who link to you are essentially voting for your site as a credible resource on the specific subject that it covers.
It is also important to consider that organic links don't all happen at once. If you do want to build links, build them gradually to more closely mimic the way organic links would develop.
There is a lot more to learn about link building, but this is a start.
How to Build Effective Links - To learn more about this author, visit Dan Goldstein's Website.
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Dan Goldstein
(Visit Dan's Website)
Dan Goldstein is the owner and President
of Page 1 Solutions, LLC (ww
w.page1solutions.com), an Internet
marketing agency in Golden, Colorado that
specializes in marketing websites for
personal injury attorneys, LASIK surgeons,
cosmetic surgeons and cosmetic dentists.
Dan is a practicing attorney and General
Counsel of Page 1's parent company -
Network Affiliates, Inc. (www.netaff
.com), an advertising agency that
specializes in advertising and marketing
for lawyers and doctors.
Dan has written numerous articles and
given presentations on Internet marketing
strategies and tactics over the years.
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