How Link Building Works

A good portion of the work on a campaign is devoted to Link Building on a monthly basis as link building is one of the main factors of ranking in the search engines. Good quality links are needed to help with a websites. So I thought I would provide some information on link building to help you understand the process a little better.

Link popularity refers to the number and quality of links pointing to your website. Having other authoritative websites link to your website tells the search engines that they consider your website important, and thus helps increase your popularity.

With link building, we want these to appear at a more natural pace, and not artificially created as link building should be a gradual process for a website. Artificially gaining too many links very quickly in a short span of time can cause problems with the search engines.

Search engines prefer websites that have links from authoritative websites in a similar industry/focus. Links from authoritative websites helps with a websites visibility and gaining incoming links helps with its search engine rankings.

Free Directory Submissions

With the free directories, much of these are volunteer based, and as a result, it can take months with some just to get listed. When a link building campaign begins using free directory submissions, there is a delay or ripple effect of waiting for the directories to list the website and then get credit for the new link. So you can essentially see there is a ripple effect with the free directory submissions with a link building campaign, and patience is often needed as well.

Paid Directory Submissions

With paid directory submissions, for a certain price, the directory will review your submission in much quicker, usually within a few days. There are many quality paid directories for websites to be listed, and these days it helps to set aside a portion of your marketing budget for these. Some are a one time fee, and others are a recurring yearly fee.

Types of links (One way, Two way and Swapping Links)

With both Free and Paid directories, these are often one way links, from the directory to website. These are generally the types of links that we aim to gain as one way links tend to be more valuable than swapping links with other websites.

Swapping links (two way links) are becoming less valuable for websites when it comes to ranking higher. The search engines are easily able to detect websites that swap links, and these links can be discounted to a certain extent so they are not as valuable as compared to one way links. So one way links are more valuable than two way/swapping links.

Another way that some websites look to exchange links is using the triangle effect where the linking pattern is more of a triangle or circle. These are also very easy for the search engines to detect as well.

This is not to say that reciprocal links are bad, but you should be selective on the links/pages/websites that you exchange with. They should be within a similar industry/focus as yours. Link to the website if you feel they are a good resource for your own visitors, and link with websites that can potentially send traffic your way.

With one way links being more valuable than two way (reciprocal links) for a website, generally it’s better to devote more time to towards the one way links for websites.
 

Gerard Manning
Search Engine Optimization Specialist
Search Engine Marketing Agency :: Manning Search Marketing