It is already a well accepted principle in online marketing that a website cannot attain marketing ascendancy without applying some website advancement methods; and even the most popular and most successful websites continue to look for strategies to get ahead of their competitors or maintain their position if they are already on the top spot of the business. One way of effectively promoting and selling a website is through Link Building.
Many individuals tend to overlook the importance of link building in maintaining their website, thinking that it is insignificant. It is important to note that up to date link building is still one of the most significant aspects of offsite SEO and is probably the best method to get a site rank in search engines for the chosen keywords.
All types of links can affect your SEO results; however the most difficult to control and the one with the biggest impact are inbound links pointing to your website.
But what exactly is Link Building and how will your website benefit from it?
Link Building is a mechanism of creating inbound links to one's own website. It is a very prominent and solitary way to increase your website's popularity in all the major search engines, thus improving your site's rank on search engine results page and at the same time it brings targeted traffic to your website.
Before using a specific type of link building technique, it is important for a website owner to know and understand how a specific type of link that he will be using will benefit him because he may end up applying the wrong one and getting lower page rank results in the world wide web instead of climbing to the top spot.
There are several types of link building techniques and procedures that can either help you get on top of the search engine rankings or pull you one notch lower or two, much worse you’ll end up having a very low page rank.
So before enumerating the different types of link building strategies, first, read these words of caution: In employing any of the link building strategies enumerated below on your website, always bear in mind that choosing the right kind of links can bring extended web traffic and higher ranking which will result to a significant payoff, while an erroneous choice could get you at a very disadvantageous position – and as we all know, it’s tough to scoop out of the Google Sandbox.
Here are the most basic types of link building techniques that you can choose from:
- One Way Link Building. The process involves one website giving a link to another website based on quality and usage. There's absolutely no need for the recipient website to give a link from the source of link. Simply stated, another website links to you and you don’t link back to them. These types of links are not easy to obtain but once you have them on your website, your site's popularity will surely improve in search engines. Another good thing about one-way link building is that the website owner will have assurance that his website won't be linked to spam or bad sites as there is no need for him to get links from his recipient websites. Examples of one way links are article submissions, directory submissions, blog submissions, press release submission, etc.
- Reciprocal Link/Two Way Link Building. An exchange of links between two websites is necessary to complete this process. This means that when a website links to you, you link back to them. With this type of link building scheme, it is best to scrutinize and study requests for link exchange to get quality partners instead of ending up with fraudulent and spammy ones.
- Three way link exchange. This involves an exchange of link between three websites where in one website gives link to a recipient website, the recipient website also gives link to a third website and in turn, the third website give it's link to the source of the first link. Simply stated, A gives a link to B, B will give its link to C, and in turn, C will give a link to A.
One way links are considered more valuable especially in the eyes of search engines, however, not all one way links are valuable as several factors still need to be considered such as the link's relevance to your website, the amount of popularity the website linking to you has, among others.
It is also important to note that a link may have no value on a search engine’s perspective, but this link may drive qualified traffic to your website.
It is highly recommended to have more websites link to you but if you only want to focus on getting high quality links or those links that gives you page reputation and high page rank, it is best that you focus upon getting links for your targeted keywords. This being said, it is necessary that you begin with Keyword Research. Keyword Research will help you determine the correct targeted keywords, thus you will also get text links that are valuable to your site as there is no sense in using keywords and ranking on the first page for a keyword that no one is looking for.
To help you with your research, you need a very reliable keyword research tool that will not only help you analyze and determine the keywords that you should be targeting for your website, but will also give you an overview of the competition these keywords attract. KeywordSpy can give you all these information and a lot more. With KeywordSpy, data such as similar and related keywords which fall into your category or niche is just a click away. This tool will show you and help you analyze the keywords currently employed by your competitors for you to determine if it is wise to employ a certain keyword in your website.
KeywordSpy also has its own plugin tool called the KeywordSpy SEO/PPC Plugin which will allow you to view a certain website’s backlinks and SEO details. So, if you have affiliates or you know affiliates or websites involved in the same niche, you can easily find out the websites they have linked on by checking out their backlinks through the KeywordSpy Plugin. By doing so, you can make a thorough investigation and analysis of your competition’s backlinks, and with this information you can start getting links from the websites that you have not yet reached, through directory submission.
There are still lots of link building techniques and strategies that will boost your website's popularity but always remember that in Link Building quality is far better than quantity, so I suggest that you focus and keep working on quality link building strategies because strong link building will get you soaring past your competitors.
