Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website – Step Eight: Link Building
Welcome to part eight in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed website submissions. In part eight we will be covering the importance of link building and developing inbound links to your website.
This is arguably on of the most important aspect of the SEO process and can mean the difference between first page rankings and 100th. It has to be done right and it has to be done on an ongoing basis.
Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.
The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:
1. Keyword Selection (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/keywords.htm)
2. Content Creation (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/content.htm)
3. Site Structure (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/structure.htm)
4. Optimization (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/optimization.htm)
5. Internal Linking (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/internal-linking.htm)
6. Human Testing (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/human-testing.htm)
7. Submissions (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/submissions.htm)
8. Link Building
9. Monitoring
10. The Extras
Step Eight – Link Building
Link building: it’s pretty much understood that this is a critical component when you’re trying to attain top search engine positioning however the confusion enters when it’s time to decide exactly what you should do.
From talk about reciprocal link building one might come to believe that this is the golden egg of SEO. While reciprocal link building can definitely be beneficial to your rankings it is far from the only or even the best method. In this article we will cover the following link-building tactics:
· Reciprocal link building
· Directory listings
· Non-reciprocal link building tactics
· Tools to maximize your efforts
And so,Guest Posting without further ado …
Reciprocal Link Building
Reciprocal link building is the trading of links between two websites. Essentially it an “I’ll post yours if you’ll post mine” sort of arrangement. There are many sites out there that will essentially link to any-and-all sites willing to link to them. This is not a good practice.
While purely speculation at this point, there is significant debate in the SEO community regarding how search engines might be altering their algorithms to take into account a Webmaster or SEO’s ability to hidden wiki manipulate their rankings with reciprocal links. Whether or not these speculations are true currently, they are most certainly being integrated if they have not be already.
Essentially, the search engines need to protect themselves and provide relevant results to their users. While inbound links as part of search engine algorithms is certainly here to stay, the way these links are calculated changes constantly and in reaction to the current environment and also in prediction of future developments, the way we build them too must evolve.
There are some basic rules to follow when exchanging links:
· Relevancy is more important than PageRank
· Check and make sure the recips aren’t being blocked
· Link pages with more than 50 links aren’t worth exchanging with
· Prepare for the future
Relevancy
Many Webmasters focus only on the PageRank of a website when deciding whether to exchange links with it. Without a doubt PageRank is important however more important is whether or not that website’s content is related to yours. There are two reasons for this:
1. The algorithms are changing to take into consideration the relevancy of links. A link from a relevant PageRank 3 page will be considered more valuable than a PageRank 5 link from a totally unrelated site. Some predict that unrelated links will soon be given little or no weight whatsoever.
2. Believe it or not, Google is not the only search engine. PageRank is Google’s ranking of the value of a site. What Google gives a 3 out of 10 Yahoo may give more weight to.
Basically, after a series of tests we have determined that links to related sites will never hinder your rankings. With this in mind feel free to link to any site you think your visitors would naturally be interested in if they are at your site.
