Link Building - How to Build Links Steadily and Naturally

Search engine is the largest traffic source for most websites. If you have created a new website, it is impossible for your website to obtain high search engine rankings. The reason is because you need to apply search engine optimization to your site so that it can rank high on search engines for selected keywords that you have targeted.

I know that it is always exciting for you to optimize your new site to achieve high search engine rankings as fast as possible. By ranking well on organic listings, you can enjoy lots of free and targeted search engine traffic to your site. You may be tempted to build back links aggressively in the hope of achieving good organic rankings quickly. However, this is not the right way to do it.

Search engine optimization requires you to build back links naturally and steadily. Link building is not a one-time project; it is an on-going process that you need to make it operational if you want to taste success with search engine optimization. And also, you should not build a large number of back links too quickly as this will seem unnatural to search engines and you will not achieve any favourable result by doing so.

So do not go about building hundreds of links in a single day. You may get high rankings initially but soon you will find that these rankings disappear very quickly too. This is because search engines will find out that you are trying to game their systems and will remove any ranking of your site from their organic listings.

What you should do is to build some links in the first couple of weeks. Write 3 articles and submit them to various article directories. If your articles are well written, they will be picked up by other webmasters and this will help build even more back links to your site. Also, you can submit your site to a few social book marking sites like Digg and Reddit.

Then for the next couple of weeks, you can participate in forum discussions. In forums, you can create a signature file where you can place a link back to your site. Every time when you post in a discussion thread, you will gain a back link if the forum allows search engines to index the posts.

One thing that you should not do is to buy links from websites. Search engines like Google will not take into account for any link that is purchased. So spending money on links just for the sake of link building is a complete waste of money. Instead, if you want to buy links, you should focus on sites that have the same target audience as you. Buy links from them to drive more targeted traffic to your site.

So the next time you are building links, you should always remember to build links naturally and gradually. Last but not least, link building is an on-going process. You must do it consistently if you want to achieve success in search engine optimization.

5 Ways to Get Unlimited One Way Links

Link building is without a doubt the most important part of the SEO process. Your site may be centered around well chosen keywords and top quality content, but without an important number of incoming links with your main keywords as link text it will be difficult to obtain those top search engine rankings.

Let's make a list with several link building techniques:

1. Article Writing

This is a popular way to both generate targeted traffic and incoming links. Write original articles related to your niche and send them to article directories leaving your links in the resource box. Using the Bum Marketing Method can get the most traffic out of article marketing.

2. Link Exchanges

Finding sites in your niche and requesting link exchanges is another way you can build link popularity. Be polite in your request and try to show the webmaster why it will benefit you both to exchange links. Not only can you build links through this method, you could also make some friends with the same goals that help each other out on a regular basis.

3. Directory Submission

Do a Google search for the terms "general directory" or "your niche directory" and submit your site to as many directories as possible. Each submission can mean one more incoming link.

4. Comment Posting

Find blogs related to yours and make useful comments. Try to add value to the discussion and don't forget to include your site's URL. If a reader finds your comment has helped him, he will be more open to visit your site and listen to what you have to say. You can find loyal customers this way.

5. Social Bookmarking

Sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati etc are very popular social networks where users send news and interesting content. You can send your blog posts or content pages to these networks and they may generate traffic to your sites depending on the quality of your posts and also give you some backlinks.

Basic Explanation of Hyperlink Types

This article deals with the basic classifications of links. Links can be broken into many categories and types, and having the basic knowledge of what each category means is important. This article does not go heavily into actual linking strategies, since that is a far broader subject.

Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal linking is a classic and very common type of link. Also known sometimes as two way linking, it is basically the process of link trading with other webmasters. It's the whole idea of 'You link to me, and i'll link to you'. Oftentimes you will see websites with a 'links' page someplace on their site, often buried at the bottom someplace. These pages are filled with various links to other sites that hopefully have something sort of in common with the site your visiting.

Reciprocal links are falling somewhat out of fashion lately in favor of one way links which are considered more powerful and requiring less maintenance. It is widely thought that the search engines recognize the links are reciprocal ones and give the link somewhat less weight than if it was just a one way incoming link. One other issue with reciprocal linking is that once you setup a reciprocal link with another webmaster, you have to return to their site occasionally to check and make sure your link is still actually there. Overall this is still a powerful way to get links however and should not be overlooked.

One Way Links

One way links are links that are incoming to your site, but are different than reciprocal links in that you don't have an outgoing link back out to the site that linked to you. For instance if I throw up a link to the Google homepage, thats a one way link to Google. They are not putting a link on their homepage back to here, though wouldn't that be nice! This is essentially the most basic type of linking there is, but it can also be the most powerful.

When the search engines go through someones site and see a link to your site, they give weight to your site. When they see that you are not linking straight back to the site that linked you, that you don't have some sort of linking agreement going on, they give it more weight as a link. The assumption is that someone of their own free will linked to your content, and did not require you to link back to them to do it. If that is the case, then your content must be of high quality. Since one way links are so powerful, and don't require any ongoing maintenance, most linking strategies out there today revolve around one way links of some form.

Three Way Links

Three way links are a variation on reciprocal links. However instead of the 'You link to my site, I link to yours' idea, the correct term would be 'You link to my site, I link to yours from a different site of mine'. It's basically a reciprocal link, but your incoming link is coming from some 3rd site instead.

It is thought that the search engines don't particularly care much for three way linking. The thought is that you may be trying to fool the search engines into thinking you are getting a one way link from someplace, when its really just a reciprocal link in disguise. One use of three way linking that is common is for when you have 2 very popular sites, and one brand new one. The idea is that 'I link to your brand new, unpopular site from my very popular site, and instead of me linking back to you from my new site that isn't as popular, I will link to you from one of my other, very popular sites so you get a better weight with the search engines'. Three way linking is fairly common, but I don't do it and I would not recommend it.

Guidelines For Creating Proper Link Text

Let me explain what I mean about creating proper link text. Link text is just that, the text that the actual link is made from. I'm sure you have seen links just like 'Continue' numerous times in your travels. While having link text like that isn't going to prevent search engines or people from going to those links, it's definitely not helping with the search engines idea of what that linked page is about.

Whats Wrong With Them?

Whats wrong is that the links don't actually describe the pages that they are linking to. When the search engines come upon that link in their spidering, they are going to assume that the destination that the link leads to is about a subject called 'Click Here'. While modern search engines are smart enough to get around this and still figure out what the destination page is about, the link is a definite missed opportunity!

Why Does That Matter?

It matters because the link in the eyes of the search engine has given weight to the phrase 'Click Here' for your websites destination page. The search engine then realizes that 'Click Here' is not correct and most likely just excludes the phrase from being weighted. So you end up getting credit for the link itself, but not any of the words in the link. You could have loaded up the link with some nice juicy keywords instead!

Better Examples

A good link to this particular article could be something like 'Creating Good Link Text'. That basically sums up what this content is about. I have used the link text to describe what the subject of this page is. A good rule of thumb is to create a link text that is between 1-4 words long that describes best what your destination page is about. The search engines will give weight to this page for the term 'creating good link text' and I can imagine someone typing that exact phrase into a search engine. Then since my page is linked with that exact term, this page is more likely to appear high in the search rankings!

Mix It Up

One thing you will want to avoid is using the exact same link text over and over for a particular page. This means if I were to go and submit this page to a bunch of link directories, asked people to link to this page, or linked to this page from some of my other websites, I would not want to just keep using the phrase 'creating good link text' over and over. A better idea would be to mix it up with different variations. For instance I could use 'link text', 'link naming', 'link naming strategies', or other similar names that said the same thing, but used different words.

Advanced Hyperlinking Strategies

There are some advanced things you can do when considering your link text that will allow you to gain even more benefit from them. Let's look at some ideas and suggestions, as well as think about some more high levels strategies revolving about link text.

Place Plain Text Around Links

Placing some plain text next to your links is better than just having bare links all over the place. Many search engines use the text surrounding a link to help figure out what a link is about. Although I would not go so far as to place plain text in your navigation menu, and it may not look good down near the bottom of your page near the copyright notice, but when available, its always a good idea to add a line of descriptive text next to your link.

Varying Your Destination URL?

There has been a lot of debate in the last few years about whether when you are out there submitting your links, asking for links, and linking your own pages up, whether you should change out the destination URL. What I mean is, 'domain.com' and 'www.domain.com' usually point to the exact same place. Also depending on my website's setup, something like 'domain.com/index.php' or 'domain.com/index.htm' also points to the same place.

So should you be changing up the destination URL constantly? No. Should you change it up a bit here and there? Yes. You should find the scheme that you prefer most, and stick with that 80-90% of the time. So if you decide that you like the 'domain.com' version better than the 'www.domain.com' version, then stick with that most of the time. Sticking with the same scheme will give you better search engine results in general, however you should vary it using the different flavors of your URL at least 10% or so of the time.

How Many Links Per Page?

This is certainly a good question, and something that really deserves its own page. However with the present state of the web, I would personally not put more than 30 links on one page at any given time. Now there may be some exceptions to this. For instance your own sitemap page, or a page that has 50 links that all point to other areas of your site. That's not a big deal in the eyes of the search engines. What I would avoid however, is placing large amounts of links to external sites on one big page. You don't want to have your page be viewed as some sort of link farm right?

What If My Link Has To Be My Name?

Blog comments are a common place where there are links that are expected to be a name. Many blog systems allow you attach a link to the name you use to post comments. This free link of sorts tends to be highly abused however, and the blog owners do not look too kindly upon people who jam a bunch of keywords in as their 'name' when posting comments. This smells like spam and they will delete and/or blacklist you in a second. However, you can often give yourself a 'title' type of name. As long as you are backing it up with a long,useful,relevant comment that blows away all the other comments on the page, most blog owners would be happy to put up a comment like that.

Get More Backlinks - 4 Great Tips For Getting More Backlinks to Your Website

You can get more backlinks with just some basic knowledge and some spare time. In this article, I'll share with you 4 great tips to get more backlinks that will help your site climb up the rankings.

Articles

The first thing you need to do is write articles. Every site should have at least 30 articles written and submitted to the article directories. For best results, do not duplicate an article over several directories but keep each one unique.

I recommend that you stick with the most popular article directories as these are better for both immediate traffic and also ranking.

Blog Comments

Find blogs similar to your own (e.g. use Google blog search) and leave comments. Do not worry if the blog uses "do follow" or "no follow". The main thing is to make sure that the post you are commenting on is related to your site.

Be helpful and write at least 50 words in your comment. Remember, this is your reputation and you can either come across as a spammer and risk being blacklisted or you can establish and raise your reputation so that people will visit your site.

Reciprocal Links

No site should be composed 100% of reciprocal links but even so, you should definitely go out there and trade at least 30 links. Search engines will look positively on this and see you as a real webmaster and not just a spambot.

You'll also benefit from their exit traffic. Any traffic that you leak probably wasn't interested in your site anyway.

Backlink Checkers

I highly recommend using a backlink checker. Just type into a search engine, "backlink checker".

Then do a check on a site that is similar to yours, a successful member of the competition. Now you'll be able to see exactly where your competitor is getting their backlinks from.

Now go out and imitate them. Go to the same sites and get the same backlinks. If it worked so well for them then it will work well for you too!

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10 Steps to Improve Your Link Popularity Easily!

You've spent the last few months optimizing your website. Your keywords are placed in all the right places on your pages, but your site's ranking is not improving as fast as you hoped. What do you do?

It is now time to work on link popularity!

Why bother with link popularity? Link popularity is important because every major search engine considers them as a part of their ranking algorithms. You must build links if you want to rank well with the competitive keywords.

If your page includes all the important criteria and scores well with Page Primer, it's time to focus on your links. You need good inbound links to move your page up the ranking ladder and get new entry points to your site, but how do you get those inbound links in the first place?

Let's make sure you understand what link popularity is. Link popularity is the measure of inbound links to your web site. Link analysis evaluates which sites are linking to you and the link text itself.

Fortunately for you, there are a lot of ways to improve your link quality and popularity. Here are some ideas to help you set up your own link popularity campaign:

1. Get your site in shape. You must first make sure your site is in shape. Your site should look professional, have good content and be easy to navigate. Validate your HTML code and check your links with a tool like HTML toolbox. If there are broken pages or links in your site, it is not likely you will get linkbacks.

Directories have gone on record saying they may exclude sites with broken links and page errors. Directories want only professional looking sites in their databases, so proof your site before you start promoting it.

2. Make time for link building. You can't grow your link popularity overnight. Set aside time every week to work on link building. If you force yourself to spend a couple hours a week on link building, it will become part of your routine. If you don't make it a priority, it won't get done.

It will take time for you to notice results, but, over time, those one or two new links start adding up until they are hundreds or even thousands of links.

3. Set realistic goals for yourself. Don't expect to see instant results. Link building is taxing, frustrating and time-consuming. Convincing another web site to link to you can be very difficult. If you get one good quality link a month, you're doing good.

Patience is the key to link building. It is important to keep track of who you have asked, since it could be embarrassing to ask a site for a link if they've already given you one.

If someone declines, wait and ask again later. Their company may have changed their focus, or there may be someone else reviewing the links. A "no" today doesn't necessarily mean "never".

4. Educate your employees about link building. If you're link building in-house, educate your company's internal management about the benefits of link building.

Link popularity is unique to the search engine industry. Sit down with your management and explain the concept behind link building. Don't assume your management knows what it is, because most won't have a clue what you're talking about.

Explain link building by describing the relationship of link building and increased revenue, this will usually get management's attention. You will need management's support to provide the time and money you need to get into search engines or directories, so their understanding is important.

5. Quality above quantity. Be selective. Search engines use sophisticated rules when judging link importance, and the popularity of the site is also important. One link from CNet is worth far more than a link from a personal web site.

Stay away from link farms, which are sites that exist only to link to other websites. Search engines take a very dim view of link farms. Google has been known to ban sites found using these link farms.

Try to stick to sites that are in the same field as your site, but not competing. Links that are in your same field will carry more weight than a link from a quilting site if you are a site for automotive parts. This does not mean you should always refuse if the site isn't in your field, just limit the amount of the non related sites that you accept. Links from within your own field are strong endorsements and will go a long way to increasing your link popularity.

6. Get to know the website you are requesting a link to. Establish yourself as a real human first, then when you ask for a link, they are less likely to refuse.

Broadcast emails are a bad idea, sure it is easier, but they are considered spam and will only make the company mad at you. Spam link requests waste everyone's time and don't work.

7. Give them your exact HTML link code. When you send them what you want in the link and suggest which page you want it on, it makes their job easier. This also makes sure the right words are used in the link and reduces the burden in setting up the link. Everybody is pressed for time, and, if you make it "drop-in simple", you will be making it irresistible. The easier it is for them, the more successful you will be in convincing them to use your link.

8. Get listed on as many directories as you can. This is important if your site is new or you do not have any inbound links. Another reason this is important is that, without inbound links, your site is at a disadvantage with most search engine rankings.

The way to overcome this is to get a few quality links. The way to start is to get listed in as many directories as you can. There are many directories out there, and the more you can get into, the better.

Here are some directories to choose from: Open Directory, Yahoo, LookSmart and Zeal.com, just to name a few.

Most directories worth linking to require you to pay for a listing. Most of the time, it is worth the expense.

9. Be prepared to give something for a link. Try to have something to offer in return for a link. Create a page that allows you to have a place from which you can easily link to them.

You can offer to work a barter arrangement with them. If your site is popular or is within their market, they might consider advertisements in exchange.

Consider outsourcing your link popularity work. Link building is a time-consuming part of search engine optimization, so you may find it is not cost effective to do it in-house. This means you might want to hire someone else to do it for you.

Many top SEO firms have turned to outsourcing this function. Outsourcing could be an efficient way for you to get links for your site as long as you use a reputable link building firm.

If you decide to outsource, be sure the firm you hire follows good link building practices. Ask them how they plan to get the job done. Make sure they use a personalized approach, just like you would do if you were doing it yourself. You need to make sure that the method they use would not be considered spam.

If they refuse to discuss their methods with you, then you can assume they use impersonal methods such as widespread e-mail drops or link farms - this is considered spam. They may call it something else, but, if their process involves sending out large numbers of form emails, it's still spam. If they do it the impersonal way, it will only set you back and injure your company's professional reputation. Saving time at the expense of hurting your reputation isn't worth it. Go look for a different company, or develop your links yourself.

10. Think of link building as an investment in your site.

The link building process needs to be one of your top priorities. Search engines have found link building to be resistant to manipulation, and they use it to measure the importance of a site. Since link building takes time, the sooner you start, the better.

Think of link building as a long-term investment in your site. The time you put in now to improve your linking today will insure a good search engine ranking in the future.

About the author: Cliff Posey, owner of CRP Marketing, owns and operates webbusinesstoolsonline.com. Cliff has also operated several other successful web businesses including Love Song Cards and Radio Career Consultants. The content in this article was developed from his experience in these businesses and his continual research