Link Building

Link building is an essential ingredient in ranking your website highly on the major searchengines.  There, now that we've got that brilliant grasp of the obvious out of the way let's move on to what website promotions can do to actually create them.  Before we launch into the nitty-gritty of link building, we will give you a brief explanation as to why links are important and the different elements of them. this won't be an entirely complete list but it will be enough to help you  Understanding what link building is and how we get you the best links around

Why Are Links Important?

To put it simply: a link is a vote.  Every link pointing to your site from another website tells the search engines that the other site finds your resource valuable and thus, the engines read this as a vote for your site.  So it must be about getting tons of links and you're done right?  Wrong.  This is incorrect as ...why?

Not All Votes Are Created Equal

Unlike your own vote in an election, some votes are worth more than others and some votes are worth SIGNIFICANTLY more than yours (unless of course you're a content writer for the Google.com domain in which case you obviously have the top vote).  The basic factors that affect a link's value to your website are:

The site strength – the strength of the site that is pointing to yours is a significant (and historically abused) factor in the valuation of links.  In the absence of other easily-visible criteria let's look at PageRank as a key valuation of a site's strength.  If a site with a PageRank 8 links to your site, this vote is worth significantly more than a link from a PageRank 3 site.  This is because a PageRank 8 site is, in Google's eyes, a more important site than the PageRank 3 site.

Relevance – the relevance of a site linking to you is, if anything, more important than a site's strength. If you run a bed a breakfast in Utah a link from a PageRank 3 bed and breakfast will be worth more than a link from a PageRank 5 web design site.  This area is a bit grey in that it relies on the engine's ability to determine what is relevant and what is not however we've seen evidence that this area is strong at this stage in the game and is only becoming more important over time.

Anchor text – the actual text used to link to your site is extremely important.  I've seen extremely strong sites get beaten out by weak ones simply due to the poor use of anchor test.  If you're building links to your site be sure to include your keywords in the text that links back and, if possible, the exact phrase you are trying to rank for . At the same time, you can't make all your anchor text exactly the same – how can that possibly look natural?

Position – the position of a link on a page and the number of other links on that page impacts the value of a link.  A link in the footer of a page is given less weight than a link near the top, a link in the content of a page is given more weight than a link in a list of links and a link on a page with 50 other links is given less weight than a link on a page with only a few other links.  If we think about it – this makes sense.  All of these things indicate whether the site with the outbound links actually intends for one of their visitors to click the link or not.  From an engine's perspective – the more it appears that a site wants a link to be clicked on, the higher the weight that link (or vote) is given.

Following the considerations above will insure that as you make each link decision – the odds of making the right choices will be significantly higher than if you ignore them.  Ignoring them may not get you penalized or banned but it will make the task far more time consuming as you secure less valuable links and thus need to build far more than following he right methods.

Side Note: Reciprocal Link Building

There have been a number of assertions that reciprocal link building is dead.  This is simply not the case. we have seen and competed against sites that were very successful with reciprocal links as their primary link source.

The problem with reciprocal links isn't so much in their value which does seem to be a bit lower than non-reciprocal links however often more easily attained.  No, my problem with reciprocal links is in the management.  Unethical webmasters' removing links after you've put the link up to them, sites expiring and not being renewed, sites getting penalties of their own due to their bad tactics are all inconveniences the reciprocal link manager must deal with.

As an SEO company, a huge issue we faced was leaving our clients with this task after a campaign was over if they decided not to go on a  6 or 12 month package.  Non-reciprocal links may be a bit harder to attain in some cases however that issue is much easier to overcome than the sum of all these issues.

Directory Submissions

Directory submissions are likely the most painful of the link building tactics Why?  Because it's tedious and time-consuming work.

To be done right directory submissions must be done manually,and that is what we do at website promotions.The titles and descriptions must be tailored to the specifications of the directory in question