Link Building Strategies 101

Over the last few years, link building has gained popularity as a marketing initiative designed to drive high search engine rankings. Link building is an “off-site” Internet marketing method which involves the process of building inbound links from relevant websites. The objective with link building is to gain popularity for your website, on the basis of referrals. The notion, and a strong algorithmic factor across search engines: the higher the volume of quality inbound links to your site, the more likely your site is recognized as a resource, and authority within your industry.

Below are some tips (in no particular order) to help develop a successful link building campaign:

Article Marketing: Define yourself as a resource within your industry. Write articles on timely and interesting topics, and submit them to well-trafficked online submission sites such as EzineArticles, GoArticles, and ArticleBase. Make sure you do your research on article submission sites beforehand – although many are free, some do not allow you to include one-way links back to your website or blog.

Press Releases: Press releases are in excellent way to drive traffic to your website or blog via links. Write news on timely topics of interest, and submit them to well-trafficked PR sites that offer RSS syndication, such as PRWeb.com, and PRNewswire.

Forums: Get involved in forums of interest within your industry. Read threads, make connections. post comments, get involved. When posting comments, provide forum signatures that contain one-way links back to your website or blog. Important – don’t spam forums! Hand-pick ones of interest, and make a serious effort to get involved in the community and share information.

Directories: Submit your website or blog to free or paid directories. By submitting your site to directories, you give yourself an opportunity to generate valuable traffic, and a create quality one-way links. Make sure you seek out directories that have a low Alexa rank, and a high PR rank. Popular directories include DMOZ.org, Yahoo! Directory, Business.com, and BOTW.org.

Social Media: Optimize your site for social media. This can be done by adding social media sharing and bookmarking icons or bars on your website so users can share your content within their own networks.

Website Content: If you are considering a link campaign, you will need to determine if your website or blog is worthy of links in the first place. Do you provide content that is interesting and useful for your visitors? Ask friends, family, peers, and colleagues for feedback. If you believe you might need a content overhaul, seek out a copywriter.

Overview

When contacting site owners directly for a link, make sure the site has a good reputation, and that the content is relevant to your site. Also make sure that you create a value proposition so the site owner understands what’s in it for them.

Avoid requesting links from a website that contains too many links — a good rule of thumb is no more than 50+ links per page. Create a good “anchor text,” otherwise the link won’t do much good. The anchor text should clearly and accurately describe your site’s content so there are no surprises for the referral who arrives on your site.

Remember that the Internet started on links, and this hasn’t changed. Link building should be part of your marketing mix to help grow traffic, and position you an authority within your industry. Make it a point to strive for quality content so that your site is interesting, and truly a resource for visitors.