Link Building 101

The search engine rankings as well as the individual PageRank of a website and its pages  of any website is determined in part by the number of links received from external websites.

Google (and many other search engines) have a page ranking systems which are constantly evolving. At first, any  link leading to your website could contribute to the PageRank of the page it led to as well as your site as a whole, but this is no longer strictly true.

Google has tweaked its page ranking system to a new level over the past few years, so that more factors are taken into account and all links are not equal. The website or page linking to you should have a high PageRank itself, and should also be very relevant to your website.

The reason for this change is that many black hat webmasters were creating elaborate linking schemes, link exchange systems and spamming links to create the illusion that their site was valuable.  Major search engines saw the ever increasing misuse of spam linking, and realized that many sites with high PageRank were actually selling links for profit, regardless if the site receiving the link was worthy of it.

Therefore the search engines decided that tighter criteria was needed to govern how links affected PageRank. Simply gathering links from whatever source possible does not apply now – instead, webmasters must seek out and obtain links from websites with good PageRank and a relevancy to their own website.

Web directories have established themselves with search engines, and contain relevant categories. Specialized directories allow you to target your niche. Back links from these directories will build your authority.

You can also use social networking sites to build relevant back links.  Join social networking sites, build a solid profile, become a voice of authority within your niche, and build a following. You can place links in the network and others who admire you will follow suit. These are great organic links.

You can also create original content that is relevant to your site’s topic but does not market it specifically, and post this content as articles or press releases.  Such articles can be indexed by  news sites, or placed in article directories with good PageRank.

Finally, consider exchanging with non competing sites, by way of exchanging advertising banners. This is the new way of reciprocal linking, and can provide higher click through rates to your site.

Don’t ignore link building!  It is an essential part of search engine optimization, and though time consuming it must not be neglected.

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