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Link Building Advice

First of all I'm assuming that you have got to this page as you want to start an effective link building campaign. I'm also assuming you already know what the effectivness and value of taking time out to develop a solid linking campaign / strategy will have on your overall positioning on the Search Engines, visitors to your site and increased brand awareness.

In a nutshell, websites need links because links send traffic - Be it through beter positioning in the SERPS or a link from another website, links produce traffic.

However! Its not just about linking to anybody and everybody, that will get you nowhere fast. Don't get me wrong, links are links no matter what, but there's the right kind of link as well as the wrong kind of link.

Here I intend to show you the best way to implement a solid and well defined linking strategy that will produce results. I'll also be offering up some very good resources specifically relating to link building.

Linking Strategy

What is a linking strategy?
In short its the methodology of building Inward Bound Links (IBL's) to your website to help achieve your business objectives.

By following this simple 4 step process that follows, you'll be able to build an effective link building strategy which meets your business objectives.

1. Ensure your site has linkable content. Content that other's would happily link to because you offer a content rich site. A common mistake of many an affiliate site is to build a site around the links to their affiliates and not around content first.

2. Who links to you presently. You can use one of the tools in my Optimisation Tools section of the website, or you can use the following...

In Google enter - site:www.yoursiteaddress.com

In AltaVista enter - link:www.yoursiteaddress.com - host:yoursiteaddress.com

In Yahoo enter - link:http://www.yoursiteaddress.com

In MSN enter - link:http://www.yoursiteaddress.com

Now check the results by visiting any sites that link to you. What type of sites link? Why do they link? What other links do they provide? Make a note of these sites as you'll be able to find out who links to them and subsequently get a link from them to you as well.

3. Who links to your competitors. You can use the same technique as above to find out who links to your competitors, you just replace your domain with their's or you can use a popular FREE software tool called Link Popularity Check.

From carrying out the above activity you'll be able to find out how many sites link to your competitors, how good they are at online marketing / link building, who's linking to your competitors and the quality of links. From this information you'll be able to set yourself a benchmark to aim for and as mentioned previously, use this data to apply for links with those that link to your competitors.

Evaluating the quality of a links is an essential ingredient to your overall link building strategy. Having carried out a Link Popularity check on one of your competitors you may find several sites linking to them, your job is to weed out and select the most relevant and related sites. Its no good linking to a site that only has partial information relating to your business / industry, you're looking for the most relevant and related sites that also offer good content. Build yourself a spreadsheet detailing the potential link partners and noting their Google PageRank.

Don't be afraid to link to a site that has a Google PR of 0, one day they maybe a PR 7, 8 or 9. If the site is relevant and has good content - link to them.

4. Simply work through the data you have gathered and start visiting your potential link partners and request a link. Some may have 'ADD URL' or something along those lines on their website for you to submit your site to, others you may have to write an email to requesting a link.

Remember! This is an ongoing strategy, you can't just do this once and expect to keep reaping the rewards, as many other people will be doing the same as you. However, there is automated software to help you in your link building. Arelis is one such product I can recommend. Just click on the link to the right and you'll be able to download a trial version of this product. Arelis will automate the finding of potential link partners and also send out an email on your behalf requesting a link exchange - although you may want to use your own email format to make it more personalised to each individual site that you wish to request a link from.