Why Link Building is Important for your Business

Link building is probably, the most important element in your search engine optimisation strategy.

Why?

Well, it is the most important factor Google uses when working out how relevant your web page or website is for ranking purposes.

When someone types in a search query, Google heads off to find the most relevant pages that satisfy the query. It ranks them in authoritative order and the factor used to determine that is, you guessed it, its link profile.  

The ayes have it

Every inbound link that points to your website and web pages is seen by Google as a vote for it.

The more ‘votes’ it has, the higher its perceived authority.

The higher its perceived authority, the higher it’s ranking.

But not just any old links will do, Google’s far cannier than that.  Every link must have:

• Relevance – it must come from a site of the same, or closely related topic
• Authority – the site should be seen as authoritative in its own right
• Trust – the links pointing to the initiating site should be good quality links

So the key is to attract authoritative links from related sites. But how do you do that?

Attracting link love

Knowing you need to attract links is one thing; actually getting them is something else entirely.

Where do you start?

First, there are links from directory submissions, but make sure you opt for directories that are relevant to your industry or market.

Then you need to produce great content that people will want to link to. Generating a lot of high quality, useful information can be time consuming, which is why many companies choose to contract it out to professional copywriters. However it is created, make sure it offers expert advice, opinions, and demonstrates your authority.

Once this has got out into the search engines it may well attract links straightaway, but you may also have to do some legwork. If one of your articles compliments another authority site, get in touch with them and direct them to it to see if they want to link to your content.

You should also hang out on the same online forums as your target audience. This is a great way to interact with other industry experts and could lead to a few links.

Another method is by writing guest blogs and articles. Authority bloggers always need great content, so if you write something that’s targeted for their readers that’s well researched and put together, they will publish it and include an all important link back to your site.

Link building campaign

Setting yourself a link building strategy is vital as it should be an on-going process.

Your campaign should look at attracting:

• Links from authoritative sites
• Links from a number of different domains (50 links from 50 different sites is much better than 50 links from 1 site)
• Deep links – i.e. not just linking to your Home Page, your other pages need links too
• Anchor text links – where you keywords are used as the link text
• Local links – don’t forget local directories and your Chamber of Commerce as they will help with your local rankings

But one word of warning, never ever be tempted to pay for links. This practice is well and truly frowned upon by Google and any short-term gains you may experience will soon be lost once Google discovers what you’re up to.

A natural link building strategy is by far the best way to go. Try to build your strategy into your working week to make sure it is a constant process.