SEO Link Building
March 15, 2009
Link Building for SEO
When embarking on a search engine optimisation campaign a vital factor to consider is backlinks and link building. Backlinks are probably the single most important factor when it comes to SEO, and should never be taken lightly.
As part of the SEO report we carry out for our clients we study their competitors back links and PageRank. Indeed we recently carried out a study of our own websites SEO, as our focus changes from regional to national. In this report we discovered we are a long way short of the amount of incoming links our national competitors have, and are in the process of conducting our own link building campaign. Link building is a slow process, and is probably the hardest part of search engine optimization. It is a time consuming, monotonous and often frustrating process.
The key to a successful link building campaign is obtaining one way, high quality and relevant links to your website. As you can imagine this is very difficult to acheive, and links like this can often be worth their weight in gold. A single high quality, relevant link to your website could be enough on it’s own to propel your site on to the front page of Google. Webmasters know this, which is why there are so many paid links being offered around the web.
For a single link from a high quality website you could expect to pay around $100 per month. You need to weigh up your return of investment (ROI) when considering purchasing links of this kind. If you are paying $500 per month on adwords for example, and a paid link can get you on to the front page of Google, then you may be able to reduce your adwords campaign to $300 per month, thus saving $100 per month.
As in all things with SEO this involves research, and perhaps some trial and error. But one thing is for certain and that is we need links, and we need as many as possible. But not just any old links. Reciprocal links for example are worthless nowadays, unless they are from highly relevant websites that have a higher PR than yours. You need one way links, and the higher quality the better.
Link Baiting
Link baiting is the process of adding something to your website that is so good that it convinces other website owners to link to you. This may be some great inciteful content, a usefull tool, or video. It is really difficult thinking of ways to link bait, but if successful can be the most rewarding part of a link campaign.
Articles
Writing articles can be a great way of accumulating links. There are many article submission websites, and all will allow you to add a link to your website from within your article. This way every time your article is published on someone elses website you will gain a link to your website. Article submission does have it’s disadvantages though. Invariably the websites your article will be published on are of a low quality, and unless you are manually checking every site that publishes your article you can never be %100 sure if they have retained your link.
Directories
One way links can be gathered for your website by submitted to web directories. This too is a time consuming process which produces little reward for your website. There are hundreds of thousands of dirctories out there on the web, and as a result are considered of a very low quality by Google. Also now many will either require a reciprocal link, or charge for a listing. Directory submission has a small affect on your campaign but will do little on it’s own.
Basically link building includes all of the above. As mentioned before it is about the hardest part of professional SEO, but is an essential part. Ultimately building a great website, filled with great content, and offering a great service will gain links naturally, but this can be a long, slow process. Don’t expect to build a successful website overnight!
We are charting our progress in our attempts to hit the front page of Google for some of the most competitive keywords on the web. We’ve only just started our link campaign so will keep you posted on our results.
Thank you for reading
