A Bit About Link Building...

Link-building is the process of obtaining links from other websites to your website.  Generally speaking, there are two benefits to increasing the number of links to your site: 

1.)  Links are a valuable source of traffic.  Each link is a path to your website.  Particularly valuable are links from websites with related industry merit or other association with your area of business  (i.e. websites where your best prospects may be spending their time!) 

For example, if I sell a service offering that is well-suited to small businesses, and the SBA (Small Business Association) creates a link from their website to my website, that link will be a very valuable link for me because the SBA website attracts my target market - and that link will introduce new prospects from the SBA community to my business. 

2.)  Links improve rank.  Having quality links - and lots of them - improves the overall authority of your website.   Each link can be thought of as a 'vote' for your website.  Google and other search engines place a high value on the number and quality of links pointing to your site. Generally speaking, simply by increasing the number of links from high-quality websites to your own website, you can improve the overall authority of your website -- and correspondingly improve your website's rank in the search engines for your important keywords. 

In simple terms, links can be obtained in two ways:  1.) Naturally and 2.) Actively. Natural links can be 'attracted' to your website by simply creating content that is valuable and interesting to others - content that will inspire them to link to your website.  Blogging for example, is an easy way to add valuable content to your website and can be an effective way to attract ‘natural' links.  

Other ways to obtain links call for more proactive efforts and include activities such as:

  • Quality directory inclusion (such as the 'human-edited' DMOZ directory)
  • Social media participation (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, etc.)
  • Article distribution (to websites such as www.ezinearticles.com, www.articlepr.com, and others) 
  • Content and technology licensing
  • Viral content creation
  • Press release distribution
  • Creative partner/client arrangements
  • Website badges and seals
  • Contributions to other websites including blogs, articles, interviews and forum participation.