Create a Link Building Strategy

Once you get your website or blog all setup with it’s layout, quality content and the right keywords/phrases implimented in the structure of the site and in it’s content you most likely will start looking at what is needed to create a link building strategy.

link building strategy

If you have done your market research and studied your target audience properly you will already know where they “hang out” and what sites they visit regularly.

Before sitting down to create a link builidng strategy there is some background information you need so you end up building links efficiently. We’ll start with the basics.

What is a Link?

A link, also called a hyperlink, uses the anchor set of tags to make the text they surround clickable. Once clicked you are taken to another page or document on the net.

The Anchor tag is used to link the current web document to others available on the internet e.g. another spot in the same document, to specific spot in another document, to a different page or file, to client’s email program or to break out of a frame. The default is to open the linked item in the same window.

HTML 4.01 Basics Simplified – Basic HTML 4.01 Tags – Anchor Tag Chapter

For example, to link to another website you would use:

<a href="http://www.thesitedomainname.com">Name of site you are linking to</a>

This is the same coding you would give someone else if they want to link to your site (with your website address in it instead of thesitedomainname.com).

What is Link Building?

Link building is when you work on the number of places on the net where there is a link leading to a page on your site. These links can be from other websites or blogs, directories, forums, ads you place, newsletters, articles you have submitted and anywhere else you can think of on the net including within your own site.

The way people find things on the net is through links therefore if you have links spread around the net you have more opportunities for people to find your site.

Link building is more than just leaving your link anywhere on the net. Where you are linked to from is also important. The search engines look at the site where the link is originating from and the text surrounding it. The sites that are of the same theme/niche that you are or a related niche are much more valuable than a link from a totally different topic. e.g. If you sell things for women then a link on a car site isn’t as good as a link from say a purse or shoe site if they sell things that complement what you sell. Think of it this way also, not too many who would interested in your things for women site are going to be hanging out at a car site, click the link and turn into a buyer. You would have better success getting targeted traffic from another women’s related site.

For example, Google says:

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

Ranking at Google Webmaster Central

Google also says the following about their PageRank system:

PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.

Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.

Technology Overview– Google Corporate Information

Types of Links for Link Building

There are 4 basic types of links for your link building strategy:

  • Internal – linking to different pages on your own site.
  • Organic – you showed up in the search results and someone clicked the link
  • Incoming – a link from somewhere on the net that points to your site. These show up in your website stats as referrals if someone clicked the link and arrived at your site.
  • Outbound – you have a link on your site that links to another site.

All of these types of links are looked at by the search engines and count as part of their scoring system when determining how your indexed page fits the search term someone typed in the search box.

Why Create a Link Building Strategy?

If you don’t have a link building strategy in place then you will be wasting your time and effort (and money if you pay for links) by creating incoming links willy nilly all over the place.

The purpose of creating a link building strategy is to build high quality targeted incoming traffic. Placing or getting incoming links creates a visibility for your site and adds credibility to it also. Each of these high quality targeted links counts as a vote for your site.

Take all the information you gathered in your market research and when determining the traits of your target audience and start to create a link building strategy. Don’t get off track by worrying about the numbers at first. A well planned link building strategy will turn into hundreds of links from people you don’t know or have not thought about.

Link Building Strategy Further Reading

Tips for Developing a Link Building Strategy

SEO – A Link Is A Link?

The Dangers of a One-Dimensional Link Building Plan

Everything You Need to Know About Linking

How to Build Links [Infographic] – Hua Marketing

Brainstorming Your Link-Building Strategy

9 New Year’s Resolutions For Link Building In 2012

Pros & Cons Of Link Building To Pages Linking To You

What's next?

Follow our new articles via RSS, follow us on Twitter and submit to your favourite social networking site:

18 Responses to Create a Link Building Strategy

  1. Mimiru Says:

    Thanks for the great tips of solving few of my problems. When i was just started blogging i didn’t knew about link building or all the rules concerned with blogs. When I build up my strategy I got few subscribers, then more and more. It helps a lot. And keep in mind updating your blog.

  2. Steve Says:

    If you want people to find and visit your website, you need links. Period.
    I agree it’s important to have a strategy or plan. I think the best one is to build quality USEFUL content, and then let bloggers and other website know, and also build relationships with them. Then one will get natural organic links, which are the best kind, and as long as you continue to build more quality USEFUL content you will get more natural links. IMHO, this is the strategy to follow. 🙂
    Steve

  3. seo services Says:

    Another basic link building strategy is to make some of those link go to some of your deep pages. As far as indexing pages is concerned these will allow your deep links to be archived by the search engine spiders

  4. Web Page Mistakes Says:

    I believe I covered that point here:

    Internal – linking to different pages on your own site.

  5. Spokane web designer Says:

    Keep in mind also the anchor text of your link is also becoming increasingly relevant. Be sure to use keywords for your anchor text from time to time, not just your >www.mysite.com<

  6. Web Page Mistakes Says:

    Keyword anchor text has been benificial for a long time. This isn’t a new thing.

  7. Malcolm Lamke Says:

    First good job on the blog! I used to be looking through the hyperlink building job listings at elance in the present day and was stunned as to how lots of the posts are requiring solely “Do observe” blogs. I always think how quick-sighted this is. A click by way of is at all times better then some small quantity of link juice that will get handed along. So many great, highly trafficed blogs are not any-observe, in order that they select to simply ignore all of these? I just don’t get it.

  8. Reuben Says:

    there is a heavy importance in this article put on link relevance. In my experience there arent any statistical data supporting the need to be relevant as opposed to just having quality(which you do mention). what are your thoughts on this for building links for search engine rankings specifically.

  9. Web Page Mistakes Says:

    Why spend time (and money) on building links that are not going to help you or your readers?

    Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.
    Link schemes – Google Webmaster Tools Help

  10. Miky H Says:

    Althought preferable, relevant link are difficult to acquire. Page rank, anchor text and number of backlinks are most important I find!

  11. Web Page Mistakes Says:

    Relevant links will come if you work hard on your on-site content optimization.

    Page Rank is outdated as soon as the Google Toolbar is updated. There is no indication what date the rank was “bookmarked” plus a page’s PageRank can fluctuate up or down from that time that the “snapshot” was taken. Seeing that little green bar grow is nice for sure but even Google keeps telling people to quit dewelling on PageRank.

    The focus on PageRank as a success metric only works if you assume that a higher PageRank results in better ranking, then assume that that will drive more traffic to your site, then assume that that will lead to more people doing-whatever-you-want-them-to-do on your site. On top of these assumptions, remember that we only update the PageRank displayed on the Google Toolbar a few times a year, and we may lower the PageRank displayed for some sites if we believe they’re engaging in spammy practices. So the PR you see publicly is different from the number our algorithm actually uses for ranking. Why bother with a number that’s at best three steps removed from your actual goal, when you could instead directly measure what you want to achieve? Finding metrics that are directly related to your business goals allows you to spend your time furthering those goals.

    Beyond PageRank: Graduating to actionable metrics – Official Google Webmaster Blog Thursday, June 30, 2011

    A number of quality related backlinks would help your site but quantity alone will not.

Create a Link Building Strategy Was Mentioned Here:

  1. Getting Link Trade Tips + Other Traffic Tips
  2. What are the best ways to build Links?
  3. What is Organic Link Building?
  4. Before You Buy or Exchange That Link…
  5. What is a backlink?
  6. How Much Does a Website Cost?
  7. What About Nofollow Links?

Join the Conversation by Leaving a Reply

You can use these XHTML tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong> within your comment.

By leaving a comment, you acknowledge that you have read our terms of use.