Link Building 101
Link Building 101
By Brett Hart (c) 2005
Success in life comes through building and sustaining both
personal and professional relationships. As human beings, we
strive to be at the right place at the right time in order to
make the right connection. We quickly learn that each right
connection links to another and before we know it, we are part
of a network.
Do you wonder why your site does not receive the traffic you
believe it deserves? The only people visiting your website are
current customers. Where are the new customers the web designer
promised you? One of the most overlooked steps in creation of a
website is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We like to think
that search engines will crawl our website and shazaam, like
magic, we appear at the top of the results for our keywords.
Unfortunately, it rarely works that way. We need to build
relationships or "links" to our sites. While this can be a
daunting endeavor, it can be very rewarding.
We are going to look at link building theory and practice. How
do you let the world, more accurately the web, know you are open
for business? Where do you begin building links? What about link
building software? What are directories? Who are your top
competitors? Who links to them? How do you ask for a link? Do
you want reciprocal links? How many links do you need? These are
the questions all website owners and link builders need to
answer.
Search engines look at links as votes. The more links your
website has, the more votes it has to be number 1, or the
"authority" on your subject matter. Not all links are created
equal. Links from more popular websites are weighted heavier
then links from less popular sites. Search engines are now smart
enough to know that content is related, so, links from relevant
sites are more important then links from sites which are
irrelevant.
The link text will help you rank better for your keywords. If
possible get into the major directories. Avoid FFA's or "Free
For All" link farms.
How Do You Let The World Know You Are Open For Business?
PR or public relations. The way most link builders will approach
this is to create a press release that is disseminated to the
right people. How do we know we reach the right people? In a
recent talk with Eric Ward, the father of link building, I
learned that most of the press release web services allow a
person to subscribe to items that interest them. If a person
runs a widget website and is interested in widgets, they will
receive any press release that is related to widgets. Often,
they may list the new widget information on their own website.
That's an easy link. The press release itself is another link.
Yes, it may cost a bit of money to draft and the service may not
be free, but you have built several links with a simple press
release.
Link Building Software
Link building software automates the task of collecting relevant
sites and their contact information, based on keywords. Many of
the available software packages include an automatic contact
manager that allows you to contact sites with very little
effort. It is generally excepted that you should not use the
automatic contact features. Instead use the software to identify
sites and contact them manually. Many webmasters feel the
automated emails to be spam and will reject, with prejudice, any
site that asks for a link using them. Software should be used in
addition to other link building strategies.
The Directories
The major pay for inclusion directories include Yahoo and
Business.com. These directories charge to be included in their
database of websites. They are often used by major search
engines to help determine rank. Don't forget the free
directories such as the ODP and joeant.com. The ODP (Open
Directory Project) is at http://dmoz.org. They are selective on
the sites they include. Not all websites will be able to obtain
a link at the ODP. joeant.com on the other hand is very easy to
get into. You will have to join to enter your site into their
database, it's very easy to do, and is a super easy link to
obtain.
Who Are Your Top Competitors?
It is important to seek out your top competitors, the websites
that are ranking on the first page of search results for your
keywords. Knowing who is at the top, and who links to them is
the first and foremost part of link building.
Who Links To Them?
Returning to our link building is like life analogy, imagine you
operate a linen laundry. As a linen laundry owner, you wouldn't
want to network with people who are involved in high technology
or manufacturing. You would want to network with people who are
in the hospitality or closely related industries. Restaurants,
hotels or people who interact with them on a frequent basis.
That is if we have a website that deals with the latest widgets
and widget reviews, we wouldn't want to waste time seeking links
from automobile manufacturers (unless the widgets are automobile
related). We want links from other widget and widget related
websites.
The easiest way to determine who is linking to your top
competitors is to use the link: command in your search engine of
choice. The Google link command seems to be broken, so use a
search engine other then Google. For an example we will use a
fictional company Widgetreviews, with the URL of
http://www.widgetreviews.com. Widgetreviews is at the top of the
search engines for your search term "widget reviews". Because of
this, we want to see who links to Widgetreviews. Just enter
"link: www.widgetreviews.com" (without quotation marks) into
your favorite SE, other then Google of course.
Editor's Note: The Google link command was working when checked
by SiteProNews.
Follow this procedure for the top 5 or 6 sites that use your
keywords. Compile a list competitor websites and their incoming
links. We will use the list as a source for our link building
strategy.
Asking For A Link
We now have a list of website pages that link to widgetreviews
and can now see if we can get our site listed on the page as
well. You will need to visit the pages listed. It is important
that when you write an email to a webmaster that it is obvious
you have visited the site yourself and that it is not a machine
generated email (spam). You will need to determine the email
address of the person you need to send your request to. Be sure
to state why you deserve to be listed on their page, as well as
a few compliments about their website, and your contact
information. Be courteous and succinct. Most webmasters have
little time to deal with their daily tasks. Most important, ask
for link text that uses your keywords, not your company name.
Using our widget example, you would ask for a link with the text
"widget reviews", or in HTML Widget
Reviews<./a>.
Reciprocal Links
Generally, reciprocal links are not weighted as heavily as non
reciprocal links. I usually only offer a reciprocal link if I
really want a link from a high traffic site that demands a
reciprocal link.
How Many Links Do You Need?
Your work at link building will never end. The good news is that
as your site becomes an authority on your subject matter,
websites will link to you on their own.
Your Options
You have three options when it comes to link building. Hire
someone, don't worry about it or Do It Yourself.
The first option is a good option, but, it can be very
expensive. Professional link builders often charge $20 a link +
the cost of the link (yes, websites sell links). As you can see,
this can add up quickly. Building a hundred links through a
professional link builder could easily cost $2,000!
The don't worry about it option doesn't cost a thing. But, don't
expect any traffic. The World Wide Web is a collection of links.
Each site pointing to other sites. Without links, your otherwise
brilliant and insightful website will slowly die a horrible
lonely death.
This article is written with the DYI'er in mind. I wish you good
luck in your link building adventures!
================================================================
Copyright 2005. Brett Hart has founded several internet
publications including SEONation.com - SEO tutorials, articles
and reviews (http://www.seonation.com).
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posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 4:41 PM
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