The purpose of link building?
Link building is part of authority building and allows websites to gain higher rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Link building focuses on the creation of links from external webpages (called “inlinks” or “back links”. Search engines find these links and see them as votes of confidence for your website. Generally speaking, the more backlinks point to a website, the more authority the website gains.
How important is link building?
According to the majority of SEO professionals, link building counts for roughly one third of a website’s rankings. But it does more. The text inside the backlinks (called “anchor text”) tells search engines what the target page is about. Optimizing these anchor texts is an important factor when ranking a website on the right keywords.
How is link building done?
Link building starts with a keyword analysis, finding keywords that work well, without too much competition. Afterwards, SEO professionals look for various link sources and determine which sources would be the most suitable for the job at hand.
Sources for valuable links are:
- Directories and listings (e.g. 411.ca)
- Related blogs
- Genuine comments (NO comment spamming!)
- Top 10’s
- Online tools
- Badges
- “Created by Webbuilder X” (remove these from your site!)
- Etc.
Can I do link building myself?
Link building is an activity that you can do yourself, but you have to be very careful and be prepared to put quite some effort and time in this activity. Make sure that you don’t use any black hat techniques, or swap links. Only buy links from reputable sources that verify websites manually before placement.
SEO professionals can help you with an extensive keyword analysis (including a competitive analysis), focus on the right back link sources and ensure a quick rise in organic rankings.
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Agree with your list of link building strategies. Not very easy to do by hand and it’s tedious work but can be done. Software makes it easier and you are again correct in saying that you need to be careful how you build your links to not get penalized by Google. Useful post.
I too use software for link buidling, but only to find the best opportunities. For each link building activity we devise a strategy and change our tactics according to the current situation, clients’ goals, products, etc.
My advice to everybody: Don’t try to fool Google! You won’t succeed.
I know of a solopreneur in this city who took his laptop from Starbucks to Starbucks, writing glowing reviews about himself from a list of email accounts he set up himself, and creating fake backlinks. His company was briefly on page one. But very soon Google caught on and he’s now on page ninety-something, and looking for a job.
Currently it sounds like Drupal is the top blogging platform available right now.
(from what I’ve read) Is that what you are using on your blog?
Hi Geraldo, this (soon to be revised) website is based on WordPress. I’m not a big fan of Drupal, as it’s more of a framework than a CMS. It has more flexibility for programmers, but I find WordPress more than adequate for any business, with a vast amount of great plugins, a solid support community and sturdy platform. In terms of use, Drupal isn’t the top blogging platform: WordPress and Joomla are more frequently used.
Links aren’t everything in SEO, but search professionals attribute a large portion of the engines’ algorithms to link-based factors (see Search Engine Ranking Factors). Through links, engines can not only analyze the popularity of a website & page based on the number and popularity of pages linking to them, but also metrics like trust, spam, and authority. Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while spammy sites receive very few links from trusted sources..’:..
I think people spend too much time trying to beat Google or trick Google. You should take the time to build your site properly, if you do some very basic things this will help your site rank…the problem is everyone wants to get on the first page Google right away. SEO is a process that takes time….lots of time!
I pay a visit each day a few websites and sites to read content, but this website presents feature based posts.