Infinite Path

Link building is a technique used in search engine optimisation. In order for websites to rank highly in search engines and thus attract more visitors and potentially conduct more business, the process of link building is essential. As the name suggests, link building simply involves creating new links that lead to your website. Google uses link popularity to determine how relevant a given website is to a specific search.

Create unique and attractive content

Before starting the actual process of link building, you should ensure that you have something on your website worth linking back to. Offering a unique spin on a popular subject in an informative blog, for instance, will make others more likely to link back to you.

Link bait, such as unusual and informative videos, will also work well. If you have something worth linking to on each page of your website, you will be able to get more deep links (links to the inner pages of your site).

Free Link Building

Ideally, link building should be a natural, and free, process. You may find the following techniques useful:

Participate in forums: Make yourself an important voice in relevant forums. This will allow you to keep up-to-date with current news in your industry and, if you offer solutions to problems which individuals have, they may start to view your website as a site of authority. Do not bombard forums with posts that just include a link to your website for the sake of it. Make sure that your posts are informative and conversational in tone.

Create a blog: Start a blog about your product or service and include links back to your website. Again, make sure that the information is relevant and interesting and looks natural, rather than just a means to an end for furthering the aims of your website.

Create testimonials for other websites: Find a relevant website that you really like and write a testimonial for it. You could include a link back to your site in the feedback or in a by-line at the end of your testimonial. The owner of this website will also be more likely to include links back to your website in the future.

Write content for other sites: You could offer to write content for other related sites (or provide them with some other service) in exchange for links. For instance, you may write a regular blog for a well-respected and related website, as long as the owner will allow you to include two links back to your own website.

Search for respected free link sources: These may include libraries, for example.

Trading links: Opinion is divided over how useful this is but it may be worth considering. Try to trade links with related websites only.

Paying for Links

Sometimes, it may be necessary to pay for links.

Renting/Buying links: Once again, ensure that the website you are renting/buying from is relevant. Make sure you shop around before deciding upon a website. It is also important to be picky when choosing a site. One which already has dozens of links may be worth avoiding since any link back to your website will be less valuable.

Permanent links versus temporary links: Whilst renting can be useful, buying permanent links is far more valuable. Temporary links can cause problems if they reappear after being taken off the website for a short period of time. Search engines view this negatively and may penalise you.

Keywords

Ideally, the links pointing back to your website should contain the keywords important to your site. However, it is also important to mix up your anchor text in order to make the links look more natural. If a website owner refuses to use your preferred keywords in the links, consider the value of the potential link. It may still be worth going ahead with the link regardless of the anchor text being used.

General Tips

Ensure that the websites you deal with are high-quality: Make sure that they receive a lot of traffic and do not have links to poor-quality websites.

Find out the location of your link: Ideally, links should be prominent and not surrounded by dozens of other links to different sites.