SEO Strategy: Link Building

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include

• Search engine optimization (or SEO),
• Paid placement,
• Contextual advertising, and
• Paid inclusion.

In this article we will look at link building and how it fits within the overall marketing strategy for your site.

In the above methodologies, link building sits mainly as contextual advertising but can also fit into paid placement and paid inclusion (if you have to pay for the link, obviously).

Why it’s done

In the physical world, there is an old adage: “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” This means that it is more important to know the right people than know the actual information – after all, if you know the right people you can find out what you need quite easily.

In the virtual world, link building is the virtual equivalent of that.

By building a linked network of relevant websites, both to and from your own, you help search engines make an informed decision about how to rank your site. The more places you appear, the wider your network, and so the more potentially important your content is compared to other sites with a smaller network, or “reach” in SEO terms. If done well, link building increases your chances of being found by the visitors you want to find your site – ie greater finds and greater conversions as a result.

Furthermore, by appearing in other relevant places on the web, people who may be looking for your services can find you in those other places – ie you don’t have to rely on them actually visiting your site directly from a search engine – and so you further strengthen your relevancy within your reach.

The bottom line is that the link is there to direct the relevant people to your site. Period.

This means you can also target the hidden parts of the web – for example private member areas for consortiums or associations – or engage in social media exchanges. Not everything will have a direct impact on your SEO but it will meet the goal of directing the relevant people to your site.

How it’s done

The best results are achieved the old fashioned way – manually.

This requires often-lengthy periods of research looking at different sites, contacting the owners and getting links placed on the relevant page(s) in the target site. Each target site needs to be investigated for potential “spamminess” (not a real word but heard a lot in SEO circles). This means that we need to make sure we are not placing a link on a website that is poorly thought of by search engines, for example link farms.

Some websites require a fee for inclusion and can often be private, members-only directories. Although these do not have any relevancy for search engines, they are important because you have identified that your target audience is part of the membership of the target site.

Some websites will request a reciprocal link before placing your link on their site. While this two-way linking is beneficial – it helps inform search engines that you are not just a destination site, but also a good source of referrals for other sites – you will also need to think carefully about arbitrarily adding outbound links to your site because you will not want to dilute your brand. A “links” page looks out of place on many business sites, but could work well on a blog.

To reap a benefit for SEO, you will need to ensure that your actual link contains the relevant keywords you are targetting and link directly to the content that is related to these keywords. This is equivalent to creating ad copy for the Google pay-per-click ads and is an art in itself: the link needs to be meaningful and create a call to action (ie the viewer to click) yet be brief. The landing page – the content they arrive at – needs to be directly related to the link or you will lose the visitor. This may require generating additional content for your site.

Monitor your links

After you have taken time to put in place your links, monitor them. The web changes and sometimes a domain you have linked to may be sold on to a new owner and their content differ greatly from the content you originally linked to. You could find yourself directing your visitors to unsuitable content and your brand will suffer by association.

On the flip side, a site that has linked to you may become a link farm or be reduced in importance by search engines. If you are keeping an eye on how your inbound links are working you can detect changes and act accordingly.

There are three  important things to remember about link building:

1. It will take time – it’s a slow process
2. Don’t add too many links at any one time – search engines distrust this as possible spamming
3. Monitor your links – the web changes so you don’t want any surprises

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