Linkbuilding

Linkbuilding is arguably the most important element of successful search engine optimization. Without any links, the search engines won’t find you. With only a few links, they will categorize you as less relevant than more connected sites and consider you less important in the grand scheme of things. ‘Link popularity’ is a term that refers to the number of links you have pointing to your site. Needless to say, the more links the merrier for SEO purposes – as long as they are high quality.

A natural link structure

There are several types of links to, from and within your site that the search engines expect to see. They are looking for organic sites that have developed naturally over a long period of time and whose linking partners are highly relevant to the site itself. A good mix of the following is recommended:

• Inbound links
  These are links that point to your site from other, relevant sites. You can secure these by creating unique content that acts as link bait for other bloggers and webmasters, offering to publish permanent articles about other sites on your site, exchanging content for a link, securing directory links and so on. The temptation can be to fast forward this process using black hat means i.e. link farms and such like. This will not be tolerated for long by the search engines as they will soon identify your unnatural link structure and penalise your site.
• Reciprocal links
  This is a way to secure inbound and outbound links by contacting webmasters with the offer of a trade. Link exchanges are considered less important than inbound links as they are easier to set up and carry less credibility as to the quality of your site. Keeping reciprocal links highly relevant however, will help forge a coherent theme, helping dictate your relevance in the SERPs.
• Outbound links
  While not anywhere as important as inbound links, the search engines will still expect to see a degree of outbound links in your site demonstrating your natural link structure. They may seem pointless but outbound links are actually valuable in helping the search engine’s determine the theme of your site.
• Deep-links
  Deep-links can be internal or external and basically refer to the process of linking to the sub-pages of your website. A site that has all links pointing to the homepage can suggest to the search engines that some form of automated linking has taken place. Deep-links will suggest a site of substance and make more of your content available for indexing. It costs you nothing to make sure you internally link to sub-pages and you should be looking to produce good content that helps you secure inbound links to pages throughout your site.

Webmasters often look to external agencies to do their linkbuilding for them as it is a highly time-consuming process. However, it is a good idea to research SEO companies well or use reputed firms that err on the side of caution when linkbuilding. Too many links too quickly, or the hint of bad practice will land you in hot water with the search engines.