Linkbuilding Fundamentals

In my previous entry, I talked about how big of a chunk links are to your site’s SEO. In this one, I’ll be talking about the basics and must-knows about linkbuilding. Why do you need links? How important is it? Where do I start?

Links don’t grow on trees

First off, you have to realize the linkbuilding is one of the slowest, pain-in-the-ass processes that you have to go through to grow your site’s visibility as an SEO practitioner. Links don’t just pop out of nowhere. You have to earn it.

And, yes, even if links do grow on trees, you have to climb a bad-ass ladder in order to pick it off.

So why do you need links?

Links make up roughly 42% of your site’s SEO. Now that’s a HUGE chunk out of the SEO pie-chart from SEOmoz. That number is no joke. But it’s not everything too. Links give your site more authority and reputation – giving it the power to strengthen the weight of it’s keywords.

Your keywords are your foundation but your links make up the building. And what search engines usually look for is the building – then it makes its way down to the foundation. If your building looks good and is tall enough for it to be easily found, then your foundation is given deeper consideration and trust because it can hold up a tall and well-made structure.

The idea behind this is easy: the more links to your site only means your site is referred by that many other websites. It means that your site must contain something interesting to all those site owners/webmasters, thus people would most probably also find your content useful – therefore, search engines like Google, refers you in their search engine results page (SERPs)

You’ve got to pick your Pumpkins

Not all links are good for your site’s ranking. Some links can bring your site down. It’s not altogether devastating – but that only means you have to choose your links carefully. Picking links isn’t an easy SEO task. It’s like one whole module altogether.

In choosing where to get links, there are major factors to consider:

First, you have to look at the page rank of the website. Why? Because the higher the page rank is, the more Google juice you can get from it.

Second, look at the website’s niche. Is your site related to this website? If you’re not related, the links you’re gonna get from that site is next to useless.

Thirdly, look at all the outbound links the site is giving away. Too many outbound links can mean that you’ll be sharing with all the other websites that this site is linking out to – giving you less Google juice compared to sites with low outbound links.

Fourth, look at all the sites it gets its links from. Are they reputable sites? Are they related to your niche? Maybe you can get links from those sites too!

Fifth, look at the site’s links if they are nofollow links. If you’re trying to rank (especially in Google), nofollow links will not help. So you better look for sites that don’t put nofollow in their links

There are many ways to get links. Some are effective in boosting your rank, some are effective in giving you traffic, and some are effective in wasting your time. Here are some of the ways you can build your backlinks:

• Directory listing
• Forum posting
• Guerilla Blogging
• Linkbait
• Link exchange
• Paid links
• Negotiations with webmasters
• Internal Linking

You can search more about these methods in the internet. It’s all in Google. But for your reference, I’ll be compiling these into future entries as well. I’ll be providing a step-by-step help guide on how we do it and how you can do it too.

Tips for Keeps: Apply what you’ve learned from this entry in your own site. If it works, then keep on doing it. If it doesn’t then throw it in the trash can and move on to the next technique. Linkbuilding is tasking and is a pain in the ass but it pays off BIG TIME.