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Apparently it is here to stay: the power of the inbound link. Google values the inbound link in a powerful way. It’s a vote for your site, and without the votes, you don’t get that Googletrust and you don’t get that ranking. Getting the right mix of links is crucial, and how to even get these links is a mystery to most, and a pain in the rear to the rest of us. But with the right effort and knowledge, you can create a logical mix of inbound links that will indicate to search engines that your site is valuable.

Now in the long term, your focus on having a visitor friendly site, with material that a visitor wants to see, will be rewarded by the search engines. And of course increase conversions and loyalty. So be careful not to lose the perspective of your customer, your visitor, and make your site what the public wants.

But still, it is a hard fact that is here to stay: the SEO work must be done or your site will end up ignored. Obtaining links, proper structure, not too much flash, fresh content, fresh content, add a blog, directory and articles submitted, press releases, widgets, meta tags, keyword density not too high not too low. All the basics have to be included or even that wonderful site that sells purple pillows shaped like mushrooms will not rank for ‘purple mushroom pillows’. (Ok that is pretty long, maybe it would… but you get the point) There are only so many articles one can provide to their visitors about the benefits of purple mushroom pillows, and how to best care for purple pillows, and the reasons mushroom shaped pillows are the best. Early on in your SEO work, you will realize that all of this manipulation is not adding value to your visitors at all. But it just must be done.

So accepting that you will have to manipulate your marketing plan for the search engines as well as visitors, you will embrace this intimidating link building campaign. You must get links. Gotta do it. No getting around it. And link baiting, enticing people to link to you by offering rich valuable content, or free widgets, or press releases, is a big part of it. But baiting is just not enough for most sites, you will have to do active building the hard way: one at a time or buying them. You will want lots of smaller links, and a few big boys. Some links in content from a high PR will work magic on most sites, especially mixed in with the average links. A few authority links such as EDU links or GOV links will complement your smaller links and give you a big boost.

The basics for a good link campaign: Well rounded, and well timed. A variety of links from numerous sources, some from authority sites and some from new sites and blogs. Watch not to build too many too fast, a spike will be detected. Keep anchor text relevant but varied. Use internal pages as well, especially high content pages. Links embedded in relevant content are hands down the most valuable, strive for as many as possible.

And how to get all of this done? It is daunting, and the only way to do it right is to spend an enormous amount of time on it. This is why companies are hiring these things out, and focusing on designing their site for their visitor, letting the SEO worry about the rest.

Tags: Linking

Popularity: 15% [?]

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