subject: Link Building [print this page] Author: J Quinton Author: J Quinton
Building links to a website is an essential part of marketing online. Not only should your website gain more visitors via your new links, it will also help your rankings with the search engines. However, there are some basic principles that should be followed to avoid becoming spammy which can lead to being penalised by the search engines...which is never a very good outcome for anyone trying to market their website. There are many ways you can build links on the internet, it just requires some regular time and a little bit of savvy. Being good at networking will always work in your favour as youll probably find the best links you get are from business associates with successful websites already running. With regard to link building and SEO there are several things you need to think about. Search engines calculate the importance or popularity of a website by counting the amount of inbound links a particular website has. Not only this, they also judge the quality of links. A high quality link is usually one that comes from an old domain with a high page rank, and is positioned as close to the home page of the website as possible. One way links are crucial here as reciprocal links will be devalued in the eyes of the search engines. A lot of websites that offer free links will code the link in a certain way so that the search engines dont use them to calculate page rank. These are called no follow links and should obviously be avoided if possible. Submitting your website to online directories is always a good place to start. Directories can range from local listings through to global directories such as www.dmoz.org. Always ensure that when submitting your site to a directory you choose the most relevant category. Choosing the wrong category can lead to your listing being declined, or at best missing out on some juicy targeted traffic. Another thing to consider here is should you or shouldnt you pay for premium listings. Our advice is that if you can afford to do it, and the directory in question is good enough to justify the cost then go for it. You will be much more likely to gain traffic from a premium position and the link is also likely to carry more weight as far as the search engines are concerned. By far, the best way of gaining inbound links from high quality websites is to network. Try creating a list of websites that you feel are relevant to your business and have high page ranks. Once you have a list together, try emailing (personal emails only!) the webmasters to strike up a relationship explaining that you are trying to promote your site and would be very grateful for a link. This technique can also be applied when approaching bloggers and online journalists. Having a good press release to hand will aid you in this process. Having a link from a press website or a well read blog will always be of benefit. The higher quality the link, the better your search engine optimisation will be!About the Author:
