SEO Link Building
It is quite easy to be outranked with regards to search engines. If any of your competitors has a large number of good quality inbound links from closely related websites using well optimized anchor text, then you will need to plan your link building strategy very carefully. Link popularity is now the leading factor in Google's page ranking results. Other major search engines such as Yahoo and MSN also give a strong emphasis to back links for their ranking criteria.
In such a competitive atmosphere, link popularity will make or break your search engine optimization campaign. Links more often than not are heavily content related. In order to earn them, a site must offer high quality content and be worthwhile to potential visitors.
The way to win at link building is by making and helping friends that can help influence your rank on search engines. Google says, 'In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. Sites with genuine authority will only link with sites they feel to have genuine authority (after all their reputation is at risk to a extent by association to you) and this will turn into content and relevance making the search engine notice you more easily.'
A top level search engine ranking leads to more friends. At SearchPro Systems, we make sure that this critical aspect of your SEO pushes you to the front of the line. Remember though, Authority isn't simply established through what content is on your web pages alone, it is earned from a blend of assorted factors and how many websites with Authority you have been affiliated with.
Here is a list of possible link opportunities that we survey during the link building portion of a SEO campaign:
Profile Sites - New style "Web 2.0" sites often allow for the creation of profiles with links. Frappr, Newsvine, MySpace, Yahoo! 360, Digg, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon are all excellent places to look for quality links.
Blogsphere - Identify the leading bloggers in your current market place. Link to them from your blog, but let them know you've done so. If your site has quality it's probable that many will respond and link back to you.
University sites - .edu or .ac sites carry great weight. Simply contributing an article that could be of some use could very well grant you a link.
Government sites - .gov sites carry great weight as well, although they are not easy links to earn.
Your personal blog – People are often apt to read things that are personal and interesting and your blog can be just that. You can form your blog however you want in order to use it as a tool to pull people in.
Professional contacts - Friends/Co-workers sites, suppliers or industry bodies. It's always good to network your URL to the people you know.
Directories - There are several paid and free directory submission opportunities (e.g. Yahoo!). This is the easiest and fastest method of link building. There are several good quality directories whose permanent directory listings show up as legitimate back links within Google, Yahoo, and MSN. We manually submit to quality directories that relate to exactly what you’re looking for.
Link baiting - Embed copy or media with links contained within the site content. We apply intelligent Internet marketing to entertain and attract attention by potential viewers.
High quality exclusive content - Content is king. Offering top notch content, useful tools or other supportive services can be a commanding way to draw non-reciprocal links. Envision the authority of a site that establishes itself as an industry resource - tefl.com for example.
Article submission, syndication and article exchange - Articles are likely to be relevant and non reciprocal and you may have the chance to include links to more than just one page in the article. This might include a reference to an internal page within the section and maybe a link to the author’s bio.
Widgets - Screen savers, wallpapers, feed displays, viral applications, and niche applications that site owners can include on their own sites is a big part in the quest to build links.
Offline marketing - Use offline marketing campaigns to generate links that can help rank.
Link requests – Find the sites that you wished to be linked from and ask away. The only way you’ll know is if you ask. It is also a great way to begin a relationship with the company or website.
Again, relevance is the answer and it's always important to ask yourself, "Would potential visitors be interested in that site?" If you can answer that your site visitors would be truly interested in that particular site, then the link is fine.
In addition to the link building concepts listed above there are also a number of technical SEO adjustments that can be applied such as site structure, site size, consistency of the content across the site, the internal linking structure, and Keyword Density to help increase the force of the SEO and link building campaign.
Every web page should be approached as a standalone body with a unique title tag that reflects the content on that particular page. Including keywords in your domain/sub domain or file/folder is always worthwhile and strong Search Engine Optimization will ensure that your page/folder URL contains your most important keywords. Ideally name your web page files starting with the targeted keyword - keyword.html - It doesn't matter how messy web page files look or sound, as they are not publicly viewable. Only you and the search engine spiders have access to them.
Link building is a constant process that takes a lot of work, but it is necessary in order to guarantee high rankings on popular search engines.