SEO - Link Building

Link Building

The most important part of any SEO campaign is getting more links to point to your site. Links really are the measure of power on the internet, as a site with bad content but a lot of links will outrank a beautiful, relevant, site with great content but no links...everytime.

So, you know you want links, but what's the best way to go about getting them?

• Get links from sites in your industry
• Have links point to deep URLs on your site
• Don't do it all at once; do it over time
• Consider paid links and organic links

Get Links from Related Sites

When building your site's authority on the web, you should always be striving to get links from sites that are in the same industry as you. Google tends to give more weight to links that are in the same industry, especially when the link is from a site that Google views as an authority (a Pagerank over 6).
Don't worry about only getting links from sites that are in your vertical, but if you have a choice between a link from a general blog and a blog that specializes in your industry, always go with the industry related site first!

Get Deep Links

When acquiring links from other sites, don't just have the link point to your homepage (http://www.example.com). Instead have them point to the content pages that you would like to have rank better in the search engines. By getting a link that points directly to a content page, you are showing the engines:

• This site contains useful content
• This exact content page is seen as important by someone else on the internet

The more links you get pointing to a specific content page, the more the search engines are going to believe that the content page is something special and should be ranked at the top of the results.

Pace Yourself!

Although any link is a good link, getting 10,000 links in a week is not as beneficial as getting 10,000 links over the span of 6 months. When a site suddenly gets a ton of links, this throws up a red flag at the search engines that the site may be trying to cheat its way to the top. There are exceptions, but it is best to take a long-term approach when acquiring links for your site, especially if your site is less than two years old (another red flag).
Have a plan of how many links you want to get and then work on that plan a few hours a week for several months. This way you can show the search engines that your site is gradually growing in popularity and is regularly receiving new backlinks (the best indicator of a good site!).

Consider Paid Links

Getting someone to link to you for free can sometimes be hard, especially if you're in a competitive industry where people have so many other choices of sites to link to. If this is the case, you may consider buying a certain amount of links every month. To read more on this, check out our paid links lesson to see the latest ways to go about this.

Posted in: SEO