6 Steps to Link Building

Posted on 23 April 2009 | by Ryan Battles

Link building, an essential part of any SEO strategy, is the act of building up links from other sites to your own.  In the past, people used strategies such as purchasing links, only to be penalized by some search engines for trying to "beat the system."  With today's search engines, such as Google, a successful link-building plan cannot cut corners, or the artificial results will not last long.  What follows are six steps that will boost the number and quality of links pointing back to your site, done the right way.

1.  Invest in General Directories

Submitting a site to a directory will provide a website with its first "authority" links.  It is also the quickest way for search engines to find and index the pages of your website.  Here is a list of some directories in order of imporance:

1. DMOZ - Free
2. Yahoo Directory - $299 Annually
3. Best of the Web - $99 Annually
4. Business.com - $299 Annually
5. GoGuides - $69.95
6. JoeAnt - $39.95

When you submit to directories, try to become listed in more than one category, and take advantage of local categorization.  If you are wondering whether the investment is worth it, check out the competition when you search for your targeted keywords.  See if the top listed sites are registered with these services.  If they are, then you should be too.  If they are not, then you can easily grab a leg up.  In the end, it all boils down to how serious you are about competing for popular keywords.  If you want to be competitive, the investment is essential.

2.  Submit to Niche Directories

Certain site directories focus on specific industries.  These can provide more value than general directory submissions.  Many niche directories are also more flexible, more relevant, and more authoritative.  You will get valuable links from sources that may be overlooked by your competitors.  The easiest way to find these directories is to search for your type of business, and then add the word directory.  The first page of results show the directories that the search engine deems the most important, and therefore, you should too.

3.  Create Social Media Profiles

Let's face it, social media is here to stay.  Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, the list goes on.  It is essential that you build up a profile on these networks with your company name, as well as listing as an individual.  You will be able to promote content to a large audience, leading to quite a few incoming links.  Many of these social media sites do not pass on Google PageRank, there are some that do.  If you don't have the time to build up social profiles, at least take the time to reserve your company's name.  One important site is Meetup.com, which does in fact pass on Google PageRank to your site.

4.  SERP Link Building

This step is very time consuming, but very profitable.  Perform a Google search for your chosen keywords.  Take the top 50 - 100 positions, and figure out if there is a way to get them to link back to your site.  Perhaps you can ask them to link to your site in their "Resources" section.  Perhaps you can leave a comment on their blog, or write an article for them as a guest writer.  Be creative, find out what they link to, and do what you need to do to become one of those links.

5.  Create a Blog

A blog on your site will do many things for you.  Google appreciates the fresh content, and will reward you with a higher PageRank.  You will develop a reader base, who are now captive audiences to whatever advertisements about your product you put on your site (Warning: don't blog just to promote your company, people will see through your "commercial" and tune out).  Offer beneficial content to others, and they will come back for more (notice how I'm giving away free information here, not selling my services - If people like what I have to say, maybe they'll explore the site).  Submit your blog to blog directories (search for them, again, the highest on the list are your best bets).  Promote your blog on social networks (Man, this is all coming full circle!).

6.  Write Articles Targeting Social Media

Some social media sites allow you to vote on how interesting an article is (Digg).  Study these sites and figure out how they work, and what makes articles popular.  Try writing an article and submit it.  See what happens.  If nothing, keep trying.  Eventually you may write an article that spreads like a virus and brings in enough traffic to crash your server.  Rejoice!  Seriously though, this is an effective way to build popularity, albeit a time-consuming one, but when it scores, it scores big.

Conclusion:

Link building is nothing that can be done automatically.  Don't believe any service that says that it will build links for you automatically for X amount of dollars.  Unless there is a human (preferably an SEO expert) doing the work for you, you will certainly not benefit from the effort.  Search engine algorhythms are changing all of the time, and the only links that stand the test of time are those that are build the old fashioned way, by submitting to directories, writing good content, and building buzz.