Link Building and Its Benefits
Building Links is the method of forming incoming links to individual internet sites. It is done in various ways like directories, reciprocal links, search engines, circulars, getting scheduled in e-zines, etc. It is one of the most excellent methods to build your site attractiveness, both in the eyes of human and search engine alike.
One of link building methods are reciprocal linking. In essence, reciprocal linking is when 2 website owners agreeing on placing each other website URL into their websites. In casual conversation, reciprocal can be explained as simple as “I link to you and you link to me.”
Once link building is done then the amount of websites that link to a particular website is recognized as back links that improves the link popularity of a website, hence improving search engine result pages (SERPs) position.
Various benefits of Link Building are as follow:
- Link building drives targeted traffic from appropriate sites which can increase conversion and eventually sales – So it’s important to gain back links from related websites.
- It helps websites rank well on search engine result pages.
- Link building helps you in generating exposure and strength of your site.
- Receiving back links from important and strong websites will have your website perceived as an important website as well.
Remember, good things done excessively will back fires. Good link building practices can damage your website’s reputation and popularity if used irresponsibly.
Many thought that having 100,000 links pointing to your website is a great thing. This is not always the case. Although quantity determines your site popularity, quality plays a more important role in your link building campaign.
For instance, links from .edu (educational sites, i.e. colleges, schools and universities) and .gov (government sites, i.e. city councils and local chapters) are considered highly important in determining your site’s link popularity. On a lesser scale, having a similar topic .com site linking to your site helps your link building campaign enormously, compared to 1000 low-quality and/or unrelated sites linking to your site.
Link building is a very important activity if you want your website to gain more traffic. However, focusing too much on link building, no matter how beneficial it is for your website, will not help you much in growing your website’s traffic and exposure. Balance is the key in link building success.
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Why Link Building is Challenging
A Web Marketing Consultant is faced with many challenging tasks – website promotion, press releases, and many others. However, one of the most challenging tasks is link building.
Link building is often requested by clients, as it is very important in having clients’ websites exposed better to audiences and search engines. The techniques themselves are not obscure and difficult to do. However, to achieve best result, link building needs patience in order to see results.
Here are some of the reasons why link building is challenging:
Position in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)
Having a company website to rank high in search engine result pages is a daunting task – You are not alone; There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of SEO Companies and Web Marketers trying to get their clients’ website to rank high on the first page.
Consider this – You website could rank #1 on the SERPs today, but nobody can guarantee you this tomorrow, as many SEO Companies are just trying to do the same as you do.
Backlinks acquisition
Acquiring backlinks requires a lot of things to do, involving checking the quality of the partner’s website as well as negotiating links acquisition.
Paying for backlinks are not recommended, and asking for link exchanges are leaving a Web Consultant to feel like a beggar (!) – a very daunting task.
Clients’ schedule
Clients of a Web Consultant are very busy. Add to this fact, the bigger the clients’ size, the more ‘procedures’ they have to meet in order to implement the results of link building activities.
For example, suppose you have found a website that is the best match for your client’s. You need to respond fast in order to secure the ‘deal’ – And this is often not achievable, as getting a response to some clients take a longer time than some others.
Static Sites
With the advent of dynamic linking and content, static sites are facing more and more difficult task. For instance, bloggers are generally link to interesting articles in their blogs, and those are available in abundance every day.
As changes are implemented slowly, the majority of websites on the Net today are static, 5-6 pages, websites. In general, not many clients want to link to these static sites – this limit choices a Web Consultant has.
Clients’ misled assumption about how the Internet works
Many decision makers are misled and misinformed about how the Internet works. Believe it or not, they believe that their company websites should not open to any third party links, even advertisements.
Influencing them to allow their company websites to accept third party links is a difficult task.
Take heed!
Although the link building challenges above seem putting Web Marketing Consultants in a difficult position to do the job well, you have to learn the fact that link building is not as easy as you might think.
Those difficulties prove that link building is worth doing and that’s why companies pay a lot of money for SEO and link building purpose.
Can you actually bootstrap link building campaign? Yes. You can actually do it yourself, if you know what you are doing. You can even be a well-paid Web Marketing Consultant yourself to take clients’ websites to a better position in SERPs. Learn how to do link building.
Image by exfordy.
The Importance of Link building in a Website
A huge number of websites, if not all, were trying to rank high in Yahoo, Google, MSN and other big search engines today.
Link building is no longer a ‘fancy stuff’ for website owners – it is a requirement for them. The importance of this come to a point that if you neglect it, you will not be able to succeed in today’s competition to rank high in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Working hard on link building by submitting your websites to every possible search engines and websites you can imagine is no longer doable; Ranked high in SERPs for a certain keyword is not possible today without working smart for it.
You certainly need to develop a link building policy for your websites that act as your roadmap to develop your websites’ SERPs placement continuously. A detailed roadmap is very important as doing link building in random manner will only waste your valuable resources.
To rank high in SERPs, you need to watch your website’s link popularity. Many people mistakenly believe that having many sites referring and pointing to their homepage is all that matters in link building. This is not true; You need to watch your inner pages, not only your ‘index’ page, link popularity if you want to rank well.
How do you quantify link building? The numeric measurement of your link building campaign and your website’s link popularity is back link.
Back link, in essence, is a term to illustrate incoming link from other websites to your website. Typically, they include your website address in their websites. The more related their websites to yours, the more valuable the back link is.
Each web page inside your website must receive the same priority as your website’s homepage. There are double benefits in this – First, each page is contributing to your entire link building process. Second, having your pages also rank high on certain keyword will allow you to have multiple “doorway” that will bring visitors to your website, thus increasing traffic.
All in all, link building is important, as having your website ranked on the first page in search results is a world of difference from having yours ranked on the third or fourth page. Ranked on the first page will give you more exposure, more traffic, and eventually more conversion for your website (and business.)
Image by di_the_huntress.
