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Link Building has been a foundation and essential element in ranking well on the various search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN for years. Recently, the scope and dynamics of link building has changed, as discussed and outlines in the various SEO/SEM forums such as Search Engine Watch and SEOCHAT.
In the past, link building was the simple process of searching link partners with the most emphasis placed on the theme of the potential link partner. From there, emails or phone calls are made in order to make contact with the desired website for a link partnership. While this is all fine and dandy, more needs to be done now a days in order to compete in Google for top placement.
Below we are going to outline some roadblocks one might encounter while attempting to build links and offer some insight into the whole link building process.
1. New Websites have ZERO Links
If a website owner or webmaster launches a new site tomorrow, he will obviusly have ZERO backlinks. A site must start somewhere, and although it may appear the lack of backlinks will hurt your ability to search out and gain valuable backlinks, this can be your opportunity to begin building some PR for your website. Submit your website to directories and search engines where you can. Directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ, BlueFind and Small Business Directory are just to name a few. These directories can provide you with instant traffic along with some of that well needed PR and backlinks. It may also be a good idea to search out a few non-themed based potential link partners in order to gain some PR quickly....
2. Proper Link Structure
The method in which you setup your link directory can have a paramount impact on the success of any link building campaign. Link building, although sounds easy on the surface, is a VERY time consuming task, which can be very difficult at times to follow through with. The worst thing a webmaster or website owner can do is perform link building while having a website which does not conform to Google's SEO standards as well as containing search engine friendly URL's, link and file structure. Make sure your robots.txt file does not exclude your link directory. Also make sure the term "link" or "links" is not present in the directory url itself. Use a name like Business Partners, Business Resources or some other method to name your link partners, without including LINKS. Your directory shouldn't be any more then one level deep behond the root of the website and also shouldn't contain any dynamic url's. Google and other search engine spiders must be able to scan and index your link pages in order to give credit to your partners. Should no credit be able to be given, knowone will be interested in swapping links with you when the request is made. Finally, ensure you have no more then 75 OUTGOING links on your link directory pages. If you have more then 75 links, once again very few webmasters will be inclined to adhere to your link swap as they will fear PR leak, the leveraging of too much PR due to an increased amount of external links.
Continue in January 2006.... |
