The basics of SEO Link Building

Nobody will deny that ‘links reflect value on the web’ and that ‘link building’ is one of the most important, yet confusing tasks when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Link building is an essential part of Search Engine Optimization and to understand how website ranking works you will have to familiarize yourself with search engine visibility, link popularity, PageRank, and other basic linking tools and tactics.

Beginners, who have little or no SEO link building experience can start by exploring various search tools and techniques to help locate and identify backlinks their competitors are using. Knowing the host sites which allow links pointing back to your competitor’s site can help you determine where you too could subscribe to post links to promote your site.

Quality links are the ultimate spider bait and those tiny ‘bots’ love it as much as bees care for honey. In other words, even beginners can drastically increase their website’s visibility by launching lots of premium links, which will then be spotted by search engine crawlers, robots and spiders, who will report the gathered information back to their respective search engines.

Properly designed link building strategies usually incorporate basic techniques, and can include essentials such as, link popularity, internal link structure and off-site submissions.

Increased link popularity

The major search engines all have their own set of ranking algorithms. Some, like Google, will pay more attention to the quality of links, while others, such as Yahoo, prefer quantity. Whatever rules are in place, they all have one thing in common; all ranking results revolve around links and link building strategies.

Search engines believe that, if other websites and companies place your links on their site, you must be good. The more host sites accept your links, the more popular you are and the higher your search engine ranking score will be. Indeed, popularity paves the road to fame and fortune.

Internal link structure

It has been said that a website performs best if it not only enjoys lots of external links, but also has a tightly-knit internal structured. Links throughout a website have to be in obvious places and quite visible. Hyperlinks have to stand out and should be bolded, colored or in Italics. If you prefer to ignore this general rule, your visitors may miss your links, get frustrated and navigate away from your site. Check your links frequently and correct, or remove, broken ones. Good traffic flow is important and so is PR.

PR or PageRank

Named after Larry Page, PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google Internet search engine to determine a page's relevance or importance. The system is designed to count link votes to determine which pages have the most votes, show relevance, and are the most popular.

Off-Site Submissions

All links have value! Outside of using internal links and inbound backlinks, there are various other ways to attract the attention of website fans and key search engines. The following SEO components should be part of any premium link building strategy: 

• Article and Press Release Publications
• Blogging on your personal or host sites
• Directory Submissions
• Social Media Posts
• Forum, Group Postings and Classified Ads
• Review releases
• Including links on personal and business emails

Summary

Building and maintaining links is critical to any great marketing strategy. Although it can be a bit tricky at first, once you understand SEO fundamentals and have applied these basics to attract search engines, the rewards will be overwhelming. Search engines will recognize your importance, your rankings will go through the roof, and before you know it your site will be the most popular one in its field, on the entire World Wide Web!

Visit Shout SEO Services to find out more.