Link Building
From ipinfinity.com
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Optimising your website for the search engines is an increasingly important and serious business for anyone with a website selling a product or a service. It is estimated that over 70% of Internet users find a company that they then go on to buy a product from via a search engine result, and with over 20 million searches done per month on Google alone within the UK, you get a feel for the potential audience available for you if you are one of the lucky ones out there who happen to find your website on the front page of Google for any popular phrases. But is it luck? As more and more businesses get online, and invest in online marketing strategies how does Google determine that one business should rank better than another? If you've got a well structured website, with a friendly site build, and quality original content then what is that missing link which will take you from those frustrating second or third pages onto the all-important front page? The answer is link popularity.
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Google and Link Popularity
Approx 60% of all factors that determine how well you will rank in Google are based on the link popularity of your domain, and this refers to:
- The quality of the inbound links (how well considered is the linking website by Google)
- The theme of the inbound linking site (sites in similar and complimentary sectors are better)
- The number of outbound links on the linking site (the less links on the page the better)
It's basically a vouching system, the more websites that vouch for you; the higher the level of 'esteem' Google has for your website. So the next obvious question is how to best increase your link popularity?
Link Building Techniques
The following techniques are all useful in helping to increase the link popularity of your website. Always bear in mind though that there are risks with link techniques, so be careful to minimise these risks by keeping your work as natural in appearance as possible, as any technique that is designed to manipulate the Google algorithm is naturally frowned upon by them!
Link bait
Writing quality content such as articles and guides is a good way of encouraging inbound links as sites will be far more inclined to provide a link to your site if you supply them some good quality content for their target audience. You can also submit your articles to various publication networks and sites to increase the visibility of you and your brand
Press release submissions
Writing and distributing press releases is an excellent way to encourage more inbound links. Just remember to submit to the leading networks and to embed a hyperlink back to your website in your content. Press release links are also useful for brand visibility, but bear in mind they tend to have a limited value lifecycle of 2-3 weeks, so they are most effective when distributed regularly
Directory listings
The most popular directories to submit your site to are the DMOZ (Open) directory and the Yahoo directory. There are also thousands of free directories you can submit your site to. The value of these is quite low because most directories are not held with high regard by Google, but they represent zero risk, and are useful for increasing the volume of links to your website
Paid links
This is a very contentious area as in the past 12 months Google have been penalising sites that are actively selling link space. However, it is still a market worth investigating as you can always call up a site owner direct and ask how much they'd charge to place a banner or ad to your website which also contains a text link
Requesting links
This is the oldest form of link building and still popular. You can contact websites direct and ask them for a link to your site. It's not as effective if you don't have something to offer back, so do be careful if you adopt this approach because reciprocal linking is not advised!
Joining in forums / discussions
Many authority industry websites have sections allowing debate and community discussion, and if you check through these, often you will find a few that allow you to publish the URL of your site along with your comments. This is a great opportunity to offer to share some of your expertise through this medium as well as to secure some much prized inbound links from authority community websites
Things to avoid
- Never get site-wide links back to your website, only secure a single link from a domain (site-wide links can cause penalties with search engines)
- Avoid trying to get links from websites in drastically different markets as these will not be effective or valuable
- Avoid websites that have not been cached by Google, after all, if you want the link to be regarded as valuable by Google, there's no point having a link which will not be recognised by them. A site not being cached can also be indicative that it’s received a search engine penalty and so again should be avoided
- Avoid paying for links from websites that blatantly advertise that they sell text links as if these haven't been identified and punished by Google for being link sellers then they soon will be, and at the very least any link you buy will not pass value to your website, and at worst you could get punished through "guilt by association".
Summary
There are many different ways you can legitimately increase the link popularity of your website, which in turn will increase how well it ranks in the Google listings. As with everything in life, it will require hard work and time to achieve, but as anyone who is or has ranked on the front page of Google for a competitive phrase will tell you, it's well worth the effort as increasing your link popularity is the key to long term success in the organic search rankings.
