Jim Jinright
SEO for beginners: The Process of Link Building
If you are a beginner at SEO, here are some useful tips for creating a link building campaign. Links are like votes in the eyes of the search engines, so the more you have the better off you are. So these tips for SEO for beginners will introduce you to the concepts of getting links. The number of and the importance of the links on your website will help to determine the rank of a site in a search engine like Google. The links also help in SERPs or search engine results page. If you are looking to increase your exposure and enhance your position by showing Google’s algorithm what it wants to see (many links pointing to your site), then you should start a link building campaign to get some good rankings for your website. Think of links as tiny little votes that help you to position your site in the search rankings. Keep in mind as you read this, that we advocate doing all “White Hat” above board techniques which will naturally help you for the long-term.
Different types of Links:
When you are reading a manual for SEO for beginners, here are some facts you will need to know. There are different kinds of links and all have different uses. The first one is the reciprocal link. If two sites exchange the links, they are known as reciprocal links. In case of one-way or an in-bound link, one site will be connected to another site with the help of a link, but will not receive a link in return. A one way link to your site is always better than a two way link or reciprocal link. It takes some time to create a reciprocal link. The webmaster will simply search the Internet for relevant sites that can trade the links from his site. After they have received a list of suitable sites, an E-mail will be sent to the webmasters. The mail will be sent with a request to exchange links with the site. Don’t pass up a reciprocal link especially if it’s from a high authority site, but remember one way links tend to have more “juice” for increasing ranking.
How do you build links you might ask? You can look for forums to make comments on and depending on the rules of that forum you can post a link back to your site. You can submit content to article sites like Ezine or Squidoo and include a link in the profile box. The SEO beginner should understand that in addition to on page and off page factors for SEO, a link building campaign is probably the most important aspect when trying to rank. What is the key to getting good links? Create valuable content and you’ll find that most people will naturally link to you.
You will want to avoid any type of “Black Hat” tactics, such as getting involved with software that automatically links people to you or so called “Link Farms” where groups of people are linking. Often times the search engine will find out what you’re up to and they can de-index you from the search engine. That kind of defeats the purpose of doing SEO in the first place, so focus on creating valuable content, participate in forums and submit your articles to all the article sites.
Do you have an SEO question that we can answer? Let us know what you have questions about!
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Important to share those things you have learned with others
I am trying to take that lesson to heart also
Thank you for the lesson.
David Pylyp
Living in Toronto
http://tinyurl.com/y89rcb8
PS I am jealous of the Palm frond picture as Toronto Ontario is in the grip of its first Cold Advisory of the this winter.
Hi David,
Thank you for your comments. Palm trees and warm weather are helpful. Conversely, my uncle lives in Toronto and I know that your summers are fantastic, beats the big heat in Texas around August!
All the best,
Jim
No links doesn’t always mean no success on the search engines. A huge site with 1000s of pages of unique content can easily beat other smaller sites that have a few hundred links.
Hi Tim,
Thank you for your kind observations. You are absolutely correct as good relevant content is the key to success. Obviously a site with 10,000 of pages of content compared to one with a few hundred pages will out rank the smaller site. Given a situation where two sites are created equally in terms of content, keywords and page rank; then I’m sure you would agree that the site with more one way inbound links will prevail. As you know plugging into the Google webmaster channel is an excellent source of information and they tend to emphasis that links are like votes for popularity.
Other resources like Perry Marshall, Ed Dale, SEO Brain Trust, Stomper Net, SEO Book and Google itself advocate the sensible use of links to enhance your position with ranking. More to your point, if you can get a link back to your site from a site that has 10,000 of pages and high authority or page rank, then this will also enhance your position in the SERP. It should be obvious that having more valuable content, scale and pages as compared to other sites is one of many factors considered within Google’s secret algorithm. Thanks for helping out on the subject! Looks like you guys have a great company that helps people with SEO.
Great article, Jim! You don’t find many articles geared towards the beginners trying to do link building, and I love that this one is. Link building can be overwhelming, especially for the beginners. The beginners just need to remember to take it in stride, and trial and error is going to be a great part of their learning. Thanks for sharing!