Link Building as an Online Marketing Strategy

The basic idea behind link building is that it is necessary in order to establish credibility. Without credibility, your website won’t move up in the search engine rankings.

Of course, causing your website to appear at the top of the search engines is a lot easier said than done.

Quality, not quantity

If you simply acquire as many links as you can, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will help your site. Quality links are what will cause you to have high rankings. It is not an easy feat to be able to identify what makes one link more valuable than another. One way that will help is listening to the advice of online marketing experts.

The value of targeted anchor text

When you go after links on sites, targeted anchor text is essential. However, you shouldn’t use the same text everywhere. You should use a few different phrases and the correct name of your website.

Be mindful of inbound and outbound links

Search engines look at the site where your link appears and how much benefit your site will achieve. A website with a large number of inbound links conveys more credibility about your site. On the other side, if your site is connected to a site that has a lot of low-quality outbound links, your site will not be considered very valuable.

Focus on site relevance

It is important to concentrate on pursuing links in relevant places and to take note of how those places have been optimized. Links that are connected to relevant and optimized pages hold much more value.

Online marketing experts notice what is not obvious

Try to check sites in non-obvious ways. For example, in any given search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a website URL and it will tell you if the site has been indexed and when the search engine last scanned it (or crawled it). What does that mean?

If a website has not been crawled in a month to a month and a half, you shouldn’t put a link there. Additionally, some domains are more valuable than others. Links from “.edu” domains are more credible than links from “.com.” Links from “.info” are even less credible. You should consider all of these factors when trying to evaluate the worth of a site as you are building your links.

How important is social networking for link building?

Social networking for link building is very important. You need to try to get links into places where social networking occurs. As they stand alone, the links may not hold much value; however, search engines today are looking more and more at the “active web” in determining site credibility.

Even though it can take up a lot of time, getting involved in social media sites and forums and getting people who own blogs to post your articles with your linked anchor text included can have a lot of value. Remember, however, that you should only post relevant information.

Are the links that you are receiving clean?

When you get a link on a site, do you check the source code of the page? Is there any additional information in the “href” tag on the link? Is a redirect code being used by the site? If any of these things are present, don’t use the link. It is of no value to you.

It is not an easy thing to work with online experts when you have a very tight budget and are trying to increase your search engine rankings. Unlike what it was, the web is no longer a “do-it-yourself” place.

It is definitely not easy to judge good-quality link building with the web applications and social media networks that exist today. It is possible for you to succeed at this but it is highly recommended that you listen to what online experts are recommending as effective strategies. Quality link building takes a great deal of effort and time. Make sure that you use them wisely.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.