As with any past-present or foreseeable search engine optimization strategies, effective link building is where the dust settles. If content is known to be the king, then linking would be no less then its throne. If your website is providing compelling content about a product which people would like to link to, but it is not visible or accessible to the users, then you may be lagging behind in adopting a strong link building strategy. As major search engines are pushing for high quality in-bound links as one of the major ranking factor, most webmasters and SEO Services remain jumbled till date about successful link building strategies. In this article, I have discussed link building techniques in an elaborated manner, ready to be adopted for any SEO campaign in the year 2007.
What are the different types of Links?
Deep Links or Internal links
In simple words, deep links or internal links are pages to which the HOME page of a website points to. For example a website may have pages like: PRODUCTS, ABOUT US, CONTACT US, SITE MAP, FAQ and any other service specific page. Your goal should be to analyze all the deep links of a website and make sure that they are:
a) Properly accessible by other pages
b) Should not be broken
c) Redirected for any 404 error
Full fill these requirements and you have achieved a crucial aspect of building strong infra-structure of a website, geared up for getting inbound links.
Back Links or Inbound Links
Back Links or Inbound Links are links by other websites to your Home page or Deep Links. All major search engines single out quality in-bound links as one of the key factor for ranking a website higher on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). The democratic nature of Google PR (Page Rank) is solely based on the number and quality of these inbound or back links. Higher the number of relevant back links, higher goes the PR, which in turn helps your website rank good on SERPs.
Link Building Strategies
Natural Linking Strategy
When you genuinely like some service, product, article or any other material over the web, it is more likely that you would like to share it with your friends over blogs, forums or online-communities. Your referral of that product on blogs or forums for the sheer purpose of appreciating the service (as you are not an employee of that firm or in any way related to it) makes it a NATURAL LINK for that company. Natural linking is something which search engines prefer, as it does not involve linking methods which may be controversial or are prone to get spoiled.
Reciprocal Linking Strategy
With this kind of linking, website A's link can be placed on website B, in return for website B's link to be placed on website A. In other words, it is a kind of an agreement which two parties make for building strong partnerships for promoting a specific product or service. Reciprocal linking does not come easy, as, disagreements may arise regarding:
a. Placement of individual links
b. Removal of links without notification
c. The time period of retaining individual links
Google does not prefer reciprocal linking and therefore it is slowly fading away. But if properly executed, this strategy can give you some important in-bound links and can give your rankings, a push!.
Deep Linking Strategy
As the term is self explanatory, this type of linking involves other websites getting linked to the inner pages or deep links of your website. A common practice by search engine optimizers is that they put too much emphasis on promoting the HOME page of any website. It is important to get more links to the HOME page in order to increase its PR, but, it is equally imperative to get your website's deep links promoted and marketed in the same manner. In that way, not only your HOME page would be getting a high PR and ranking, but your inner pages would be getting important clicks and visits as well. That will in turn give your site a strong backbone of High PR individual pages as whole and ranking them higher in SERPs.
Submissions
One of the foremost step in link building is the submission of you website to search engines and directories like Google, Msn, Lycos, JoeAnt, Yahoo, Dmoz etc. The basic purpose of submissions is to get your website indexed by all the major search engines and directories for appropriate categories they may offer. The only hitch is the time factor regarding reviewing and indexing your site, which varies from site to site.
Paid Inclusions
Paid submissions or inclusions to web directories carry a cost of submission, but, this cost is compensated with quick indexing of the website in their categories. Directories like Yahoo, Skaffe, Looksmart and Inktomi offer paid inclusions services of varying costs. If budget permits, this method should be given serious consideration to gain substantial incoming links.
Article marketing
Web searchers are hungry for information. Feeding them with authentic, factual and detailed piece of information can dramatically increase your website's popularity in the circles. Article marketing can be one such linchpin of your search engine optimization strategy. You can create keyword targeted, information rich articles for your prospective customers, in order to lure them to your business domain. Be care full in embedding website links of your website, as it is preferable to lead you prospective customers to the deep links of your website and ultimately making them stay and pluck more information from other pages.
Conclusion
Effective and clean link building will play a decisive role in getting tons of quality traffic to your website in the year 2007. If your website hosts lucrative content for both users and search engine, then getting it properly linked can get you higher ranks and profits of incredible magnitude. Link Building is like the Genie of the Magic Lamp, completely at your disposal. Exploiting it properly will remain the core for any successful Search Engine Optimization campaign in the near future.
About the Author
Adeel Ahmed Khero is a web marketing consultant for Centric Source, an SEO offshore outsourcing firm. CS or http://www.centricsource.com specializes in outsourcing multitude of services including: Search Engine Optimization, PPC campaign management, link building strategies and conversion tracking. Visit http://www.centricsource.com/Advantage.html to discover the benefits of Offshore Outsourcing & Graphic Design at http://www.logoguru.co.uk
