Link building strategies

Link building strategies are a key part of your search engine optimization work.

There's a lot more to running and establishing a website than just producing pages, and you have to constantly be working away in the background to do this.

The first part of the process is actually submitting your website to the search engines in the first place, the second part is in establishing an ongoing progam of reciprocal linking to give your website a quality 'endorsement' in the eyes of the search engines.

This is where it gets a little more complicated, because like all things to do with the web, it's not quite as simple as linking to anybody who has anything resembling a website.

There are several stages to the process and some definite 'do' and 'don't' tips.

How to check who's linking to your website

When you start your website, it will take a few months before you even become established in the search engines, let alone be found by other people who want to link to you.

The way to check who's linking to you is to use a tool like the submitexpress.com link checker.

This will give you an immediate indication of a) who is linking to you b) via which search engine these links were found c) where you rank in relation to other websites.

Here's a neat trick ... run a report on websites that are similar to yours to find out who's linking to them.

Send them an email and see if they'll agree to site links with you.

This method saves a lot of time surfing and searching.

Why do you need a link building stategy?

A link from one website to your your own is an endorsement.

It tells the search engines that your site is worth linking to.

The more sites that link back to your website, the higher the 'endorsement' ... and the search engines see that.

However, if your mind is racing and you're already thinking of some great scams to get lots of poor quality links back to your website, think again.

Links to your website should be:

# Reciprocated ... you link to them, they link to you.

# To quality websites ... avoid poor quality 'link farms' and those that have no content, no substance and no traffic.

# To related websites ... I have several websites but I only link web-work-at-home.com to one of them, my blog, website-academy.com, which deals with the same subject matter but often at a more advanced level.

# Based on keywords, so that if I link to a network marketing website on a keyword like 'MLM', my content should be on a related theme, preferably mentioning MLM.

# Based on the needs of your website users first and foremost ... so integrate the links in good quality content, don't present them as links page, with endless lists of URLs that no-one will ever use.

# Honest ... don't even think of teaming up with link farms or link selling websites.

Those links are of poor quality, build a good, solid, honest, theme-related link building strategy and your website will be built on firm SEO foundations.

More importantly, you won't be penalized by the search engines.

What's the best way to start a link building strategy?

There's a lot of work involved in building reciprocal links manually.

First you have to find decent websites which meet the criteria that I've listed above, then you have to contact them, then you have to agree on link content and appropriate landing pages.

It's a big job and it never stops ... you should be constantly on the lookout for quality link exchanges, with other websites and also with web directories.

You should also be mindful of including some (not too many!) out-pointing links to quality, but non-competing websites.

Site Build It! offers a free 'Value Exchange' service which allows you to register for free, and then similar websites with quality content will contact you to see if you want to link exchange.

Site Build It! focuses entirely on the quality of those links and gives you lots of advice on how to develop your link building strategy.

I thoroughly recommend that you also read their free guide called 'Make your links work'.

Just click on the image on the left and you'll be taken to the download.

Using their tools and link building strategies, this website achieved a Google Page rank of 2 within 6 months, outperforming more than ten of my other sites which have been around for a lot longer.

It's packed with useful advice and industry knowledge, and it's all completely free.

Once you've started the ball rolling via Value Exchange, you'll soon find your website is established in the search engines and other website owners will be approaching you to exchange links as part of their own link building strategies.

There are more link building techniques at How-To-Build-A-Website.co.uk where you'll find a top 10 of the best tips.

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