Link Building

 

Link building is the single most important thing you can do to generate search engine traffic.

 

Why are incoming links important?

 Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN treat incoming links as a vote of confidence.  Since the good folks at Google can’t go through every site by hand, they measure the number of incoming links to a site.  The more links you have coming into your site, the higher you will be ranked by the search engines. 

 

How many links does it take to have search engine success?

It depends on how competitive your online niche is.  Are you selling life insurance?  If so appearing on the first page of google under the keyword “Life Insurance” can be quite difficult.  Those sites often have upwards of 100,000 incoming links.  Usually, however; a much more modest number of links will reap search engine success.  To find out how popular your competitors are, type their url’s into the Link Popularity Checker.

 

Are all links equal?

No, if only it were that easy.  Since websites are ranked by search engines, getting a link from a higher ranked site is much better than a lower ranked website. 

 

What is better, reciprocal linking or one way links? 

Reciprocal linking is the concept of emailing a person and writing “Hey, I like your website.  Let’s trade links.”  Reciprocal links do help, but not nearly as much as one way, incoming links.  Search engines place far greater value in one way links, and the reasons are obvious.  Reciprocal linking might be a great way to start your link building campaign, but eventually it becomes necessary to transition to a one way link building campaign.  Can you imagine Amazon.com having a silly links page?

 

Should my incoming links be placed on relevant, topical sites?

Of course, that’s one of the best ways to get traffic and the easiest ways to find people willing to link to you.  Ever type in a keyword on Google, press the first website that comes up, and notice the website just has a bunch of descriptions and links to sites about the keyword you typed?  That’s because you’ve landed on a websites link page, which is quite common.  Links pages are often the second most visited pages on a website.  Having your site listed on these pages is a great way to get more, relevant traffic.

 

Does it matter which pages I’m listed on in a website, so long as the site itself is highly ranked?

Yes, absolutely.  One “black hat” tactic is too trade links with a company, but list the site on a page that isn’t ranked by the search engines (google’s toolbar is an easy way to check rank).  Be careful about where the people you trade links with post your link. 

 

What are some other things to be careful of when link building?

Never trade links with a link farm.  A link farm is a site that provides no content, just links to other sites based on categories.  Search engines hate these sites, and ban them every chance they get.  Linking to a banned site is bad news for your site, so be careful about who you give your precious outgoing links to.  On the other hand, don’t fret if a link farm links to your site.  There’s nothing you can do stop a site from giving you a link, and the search engines understand this.

 

Also, if trading links, don’t allow a link to your site to be placed on a page with sixty or more links.  This is a pretty worthless webpage, unless it’s amazon.com. Then, go for it!!!

 

Link Building Packages

Link building rates tend to be on the expensive side, but it’s worth it.  Link building is the single most important thing you can do to increase traffic on your website, and will generate traffic even before the search engines have indexed your site.   Again, there’s no magic formula for link building, but incoming links will guarantee relevant traffic for years to come.

 

50 incoming links

$800

 

100 incoming links

$1400

 

200 incoming links

$2400