link building tips and strategies

Link building (that is backlinks or inbound links) is a critical component of search engine optimisation. It's considered by online marketing experts to be one of the most critical pieces of the puzzle.

The truth is that one way many search engines (including Google) measure how "popular" your site is by the number and quality of inbound links, so it can help a great deal with search engine rankings.

Basically, solid and quality link popularity may make or break how your site does with the search engines. Because these other sites see your site as important enough to link to, the engine' engines consider your site important as well.

That said, you must be aware it is not a case of numbers – the quality and relevance of links is critical. The links which are most important are those from ‘significant’ and relevant web sites which cover a similar topic or have similar content to yours.

Don’t fall into the trap of subscribing to a link farm which could get you banned from a search engine totally! Or of trying to create hundreds of links back from blogs, articles and social media. Google's Panda and Penguin were developed to help stop these practices.

There’s no easy way to build them and create link popularity. In fact building lots of links very quickly can be a red flag as those links aren’t always top notch. The links must be from quality relevant sites back to yours. This means that as well as being pretty important, inbound link building can be the most time consuming part of search engine optimisation.

The Basics

Before you start a link building campaign, it’s important to ensure the following

1 that you have a content rich site. Including articles on your website, on topics relevant to your business, can help this.

2 your site has been submitted and listed with the quality and respectable search engines and directories(it’s hard to ask for a link to your website if you haven’t done this!). This includes specialist directories and search engines.

3 a site map within your website, linking to each internal page with a sentence describing what’s on each page.

Note, we don't suggest too much blogging as a link strategy. We believe that at some stage the major search engines may start to see it as spamming due to volumes and quality (or lack thereof) and it will go the way of link farms.

The Research and the Linking

Once the basics have been attended to, it’s time to start to identify quality sites to link to yours. There are several ways of doing this but one of the most effective is to search for websites which rank well for your key phrases and words on the major search engines.

Obviously you need to skip your direct competitors but there will be relevant ones, not competing with you. It’s a good idea to start with a list of about 50 relevant sites.

These sites are then approached and asked if they would link to your sites. It’s best to do this manually and where practical over the phone. It’s much more effective.

Broken link building is another good method. We find links to sites like yours that aren’t valid links, email the websites' webmasters with your suggested link and you’ll get some great links. It can be quite a lengthy method but it's a goodie.

Preparation is key.

If you'd like to discuss this further give us a call. If you'd rather send us an email for more information you could complete our enquiry form.