Conducting A Successful Link Building Campaign

Posted on February 28, 2008
Filed Under Internet |

Google has always been on the forefront of search engine algorithm advancements. Their most recent algorithm places an increased emphasis on not only backlinks, but quality backlinks. Gone now are the days in which free for all link farms and massive reciprocal link schemes will deliver instant rankings. Not only will these not help you anymore, in most cases they will hurt you. Despite this, if you put a little bit of time into it, building quality backlinks is not all that difficult.

Quality Backlinks

There are a variety of pieces that go into determining the quality of a website’s backlinks, and each of them can be influenced in some way. For Google, the PageRank (PR) of the website linking to you is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. Although Yahoo and MSN don’t have a visible equivalent to PR, a site linking to you that in turn has many high quality backlinks will always be worth more. When searching for link building opportunities do your best to generate backlinks from high PR (4 and up) sites first, and then for lower PR sites. Although not confirmed (Google doesn’t often divulge this kind of thing) it is thought that for each increase of one in PR the value of the backlink, assuming all other things are constant, doubles. So, PageRank is obviously important, however it’s not the whole story.

Having a high PR website all about dogs link to your site about cars will not do all that much for you. In addition to your content, search engines use the content of sites linking to you to determine what your website is all about. So, do your best to identify relevant, high PR websites for your link building campaign. The last piece of the puzzle lies in how your backlinks are formatted. The search engines give more credence to links that come from within body text, and backlinks that have descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text. Although you don’t have much control over how and where other webmasters place your links, you can influence the how by providing your link code, and the where by ensuring that your website is relevant to their visitors. Some of this might seem a little confusing, so the next section goes into more detail on where best to go to generate quality backlinks.

Generate Backlinks

There are a huge variety of ways to generate backlinks and this list is far from exhaustive, so I encourage you to keep your eyes open for linking opportunities at all times. Although very little traffic will ever come from directories and they sometimes have the appearance of link farms, they are where most new webmasters start. Despite what seem to be negatives, there are many directories that will deliver you great high PR backlinks. The most popular and well known directory is DMOZ (Open Directory Project), and although it can take a long time to get your site reviewed, I recommend submitting there no matter what.

Beyond that, do a search for web directories, identify the ones that have high PR, and those that are relevant to your websites content, and submit away. Another effective way to build backlinks is by showing other webmasters that your site can provide a valuable resource to their visitors. Contact the webmaster through e-mail and explain how you can be a valuable resource, provide your linking code, and a description of your website. Some webmasters may ask you for a reciprocal link, and although this is not ideal, if the other website is relevant to yours, it will help with search engine rankings. One of my favorite methods is to build links by writing articles and submitting them to free article directories.

These directories are set up for webmasters to get free content for their sites; however they are required to leave the author bio that you write at the bottom of the articles. So make sure your bio includes a link to your site with strong, keyword-rich anchor text. Finally, become a member of the online community with which your website is related. Find blogs, and forums that have similar topics, sign-up and start asking and answering questions, and sharing your knowledge. By providing links to your site in your signature you can generate huge numbers of relevant backlinks.

Final Thoughts

Link building is time consuming, and at times it can be frustrating, but by doing these things you are creating a strong base for your website to grow. After a few months, these links will “mature” and you’ll start moving up the search engine rankings. In the meantime, these links can provide you with a source of traffic without relying entirely on Google or Yahoo.

Chris Lexmond runs Step by Step Websites - Make Your Own Websites which helps users create a professional, affordable website by offering articles, tutorials, and comparisons of web services such as templates, web hosting, stock photos, and search engine optimization.

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