A Comprehensive Link Building Guide

In this post you will find the link building quality guidelines & some great ways of creating quality backlinks for your website.

Firstly, I want to discuss few general things about link building (this is specially for beginners)

Link building is the process of getting quality link to your web site from another web sites in order to improve search engine rankings. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The site that links to your site can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.

Now we will go through some Link Terms which we all should know before proceeding further:

• Link Popularity: the quantity of links pointing to your web page from other sites. It can also be determine as PageRank of your web page.
• Anchor text: The words in a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about.
• Reciprocal / 2 – way link: The process where two webmasters agree to show each-other’s link on their website. Means, site A has link on site B and Site B has link on site A.
• 3-way links: It helps you build links while avoid reciprocal link building and other types of penalties resulting from it.
  A three-way link is where Site A links to Site B, and Site B links to Site C, and Site C links to Site A, like so: A -> B -> C -> A. In the end, 3 websites have links to each other, and yet none of them are reciprocal.
  Google will not penalize you for using this method, as long as all the sites are somewhat related.
• Link farm: Sites/pages with dozen of links. Built for the sole purpose of increasing search results. Often has opposite effect. Bad. Spam. Avoid.
• Link bait: Any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. A very good technique to get quality natural links.
• Deep Links: Links to internal pages (not your home page). Good stuff. One reason blogs tend to do better in search engines than static sites.

What is PageRank:

A feature on the Google toolbar which lets you know how important is your page in eyes of Google. When we install the Google Toolbar, it shows us the rank of every page we visit.

For successful link building strategy:

1) Get as many links from important pages as possible

2) Build relevance between the anchor text and targeted keywords/ phreases used in SEs.

Guidelines of Quality Links

• Links should come from related page/ category. This is probably the most important factor to determine the link quality & effectiveness in terms of the PR and traffic.

• Links should come from authanticated & quality sites. Also, take care of C-class IPs. Links should come from different C-class IP’s.

• Link pages must have been indexed & recently cached in (SE’s) Google. I think there is no point in getting links from pages which are not indexed by Search Engines.

• Links should not be listed on drug, porn, illegal and other offensive websites (spam, ban, or backlisted).

• Links should not be on web pages that are disallowed by robots.txt tag.
  
  
• Links should not be from framed pages as search engines usually don’t read these type of pages.

• Link should have varied anchor text with relevant/ targeted keywords.

• Link should be created with an optimum frequency. It is not advisiable to place hundreds or thousands of links to a new site the first few days. Search Engines like Google can easily catch these types of link building which are not natural and can ban the site. So we should move gradually with the consistancy in quality.

• If we are getting the links from relevant pages with Good PR then this is really great. But we should not ignore links from 0 PR pages which are very relvant with the theme.

• Links should not be temporary. The age of your backlinks is important.

Does high page rank Always guarantee top position in Search Results?

No, PageRank does not guarnatee any specific rank on SERPs. Google consider many factors while ranking any page for related search query- some of the factors are

No. of backlinks, anchor text, historical factors, on page factors, links from quality on-facus sites etc.

Now the question arises is- How to get quality Links? So, here is the answer…

There are many techniques to get the quality backlinks though it might take time as link building is a very time consuming activity. I am listing some of the tried & tested techniques to get the qualilty back links.

Link Baiting: You must have read about it many times. But trust me it is really a good way to get the natural links. Always focus on the quality content & try to write something which is very informative, helpful, easy to understand & interesting to read. But your job is not finished here….you have to make people know about this quality info. You will not get any advantage of having great content when people does not know about it and this your own duty to make them aware. So, promote your content by participating in social media & news sites. Once people will know about it & liked it then they will start link back to you.

Here are some link baiting techniques:

• Offer something useful for FREE: Give other website owners a useful or interesting tools for FREE. For example: if you are in to loan or mortgage sector & providing a free mortgage calculator or currency convertor etc. then if other webmasters will use that tool on ther website will automatically provide you a link back.
• Create Poll or Quize: Polls, quizzes, surveys, tests etc. are good ways to create the buzz.
• Contests: Organise something for people to participate in. It is again a good ways of link baiting. For example: seomoz SEO quiz, when people score a good percentage then they put their score banner on there website with a link to the main seomoz site.
• Humor: This is one of the best link baiting techniques I have ever seen. Most people generally act on and spread that content which is houmouous.
• Similarly, controversial posts usually get strong reactions. People post their perspective & publist the complete conversation on their on blog also.
• Research and Statistics - Research a topic which is very popular or in trend and then post your outlook on the same and invite a little controversy. Try to give some thing valuable to the visitors that people can use in some way is another effective way to generate incoming links.

Directory Submissions: Though currently directory submissions are not considered as benificial as before, however quality directories still have advantages, therefore we must submit the site to the quality web directories. There are 1000’s of websites available on the net with wide range of categories, regions and languages. Few of them are paid & fortunately maximum are free.

But you should take care of the relevancy & quality of the web directories before submissions. I am not in a favor of automated submissions as they might affect the quality of links. Always go for manual submissions though it will take time.

Take care of the following points before submitting the site:

• Always choose relevant directories
• Submit your site only once
• Choose the relevant/most appropriate sub category
• Always read the Directory Submission Guildlines
• Use the email address of the same domain because some dircetories reject the submissions from free email IDs.
• Don’t be just a seller while submitting the website, write accurate business title

Here is a list of some good directories:

www.dmoz.org/ Free

www.dir.yahoo.com/ Paid

www.lii.org/ Free

www.business.com/ Paid

www.jayde.com/ Free

www.botw.org/ Paid

www.directory.v7n.com/ Paid

www.businessseek.biz/ Paid

www.illumirate.com/ Free

www.turnpike.net/directory.html Free

www.littlewebdirectory.com/links.asp Free

www.wikidweb.com/ Free

www.linkcentre.com free

www.allthewebsites.org free

Here are some other resources where you can find list of web directories:

http://www.onewaytextlink.com/links.php?type=free&pagenum=1

http://www.web-directories.ws/General/Free/

http://www.directorycritic.com/free-directory-list.html

You can also search relevant directories by using these type of commands:

“add links” + Your Keywords

“add a link” + Your Keywords

“add your link” + Your Keywords

“add site” + Your Keywords

“add your site” + Your Keywords

“add a website” + Your Keywords

“add a URL” + Your Keywords

“add your URL” + Your Keywords

“submit URL”+ Your Keywords

“Submit a site” + Your Keywords

“submit links” + Your Keywords

“submit your URL” + Your Keywords

“suggest a website” + Your Keywords

“Suggest URL” + Your Keywords

intitle:add+url “keyword phrase”

intitle:submit+site “keyword phrase”

intitle:submit+url “keyword phrase”

intitle:add+site “keyword phrase”

intitle:add+your+site “keyword phrase”

intitle:directory “keyword phrase”

intitle:list “keyword phrase”

intitle:sites “keyword phrase” and many others.

Link exchange: Exchange links with a few better quality sites which deal with the same topics as your website. Though this is not a good way in the eyes of Google. But we can do the 3 way link building which is a better option.

Some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of link exchanging, irrespective of the links quality, relevancy and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.

While exhanging the links then take care of the following things:

• Links should be from the relevant (theme based) websites
• No links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (”Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
• Link growth should be natural so maintain the frequency

PR submissions: New product line? Company going public? Acquired another company? Any newsworthy event you may have, do a press release and submit it through PRweb.com and many other quality Press release sites. Some PR sites allow backlinks to the main site and in this case we are getting links with marketing.

Here are some Press Release sites:
http://i-newswire.com

http://www.pr.com
http://www.pr9.net
http://www.press-base.com/

http://www.prfree.com

http://www.prleap.com

http://www.prweb.com/

http://www.webwire.com/

http://www.free-news-release.com/

http://www.myfreepr.com/

http://www.pr.com/

http://www.pr9.net/

http://www.prlog.org/

http://www.pressrelease.com.np/

You can find some more PR sites here: http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/95516-press-release-submission-websites.html

Also, keep track on those who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content to submit. You can also email your exclusive news & article content to some of your friends & relevant industry bloggers, when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback, they will publish the info if find that useful.

Article submissions: Write some informative articles and share your unique expertise by including tips, strategies, techniques, case-studies, analysis, opinions and commentary in your articles. Syndicate articles on some great article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. You should optimize your author resource box to get the backlink to your website. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic. (Get complete detail about how we can get the best from article marketing.)

Here are some good article directories:

http://www.ezinearticles.com/

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.articlecity.com/

http://www.articleclick.com

http://www.articlebiz.com/

http://www.articledashboard.com/

http://www.articlealley.com/

http://www.free-articles-zone.com

http://www.articleworld.net

You can find some more resources here:

http://www.styopkin.com/article_submission_sites.html

http://www.beansoftware.com/article-sites-master-list.aspx

Blogging: Blogging is a good way to get traffic, populairity and backlinks. Blogs give you great presence on major search engines, like Google, Yahoo! & MSN. A well-written, routinely updated, keyword-oriented blog can enhance your chances of getting higher rankings on search engine result pages. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with earning a link from a blog post you decide to comment on. In fact, if you comment often on blogs, it is a good way to increase the amount of inbound links pointing to your site’s pages. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

Here is a short list of things “not to do” when commenting on blogs.

• Don’t spam thru Blog commenting. Comments like “nice post” or “I agree” and then include a link is not a good way to create the link, you should try to give valuable comments to gain the authority. Spamming comments, spelling and grammar errors, or even unprofessional language will reflect badly on you, doing you more harm than good.
• Don’t try to stuff keyword rich anchor text in the “Name” field.
• Don’t mass comment all at once. When I see the same person commenting on a number of posts, all in a row, their intentions are clear.

Be a part of Technorati. Technorati tag pages rank well in Search Engines. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.

There are 100’s of free blog directories available on the net where you can submit your blog for free. It will help you to get back links also. But take care of the relevancy. Always submit your blog in to relevant directories.

Here are some directories:

PR: 8 Technorati

PR: 8 Blogarama.com

PR: 7 blogcatalog.com

PR: 7 eatonweb.com

PR: 7 ping-o-matic.com

PR: 7 blogtoplist.com

PR: 6 WeBlogALot.com

PR: 6 BlogHop.com

PR: 6 blogdir.com

PR: 6 blog-directory.org

PR: 5 blogroll.net

PR: 5 biggerblogger.com

PR: 4 blogrankings.com

Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

Links from using the “Blog and Ping” technique

This technique is mainly for getting your pages into the search engines as quickly as possible.

Links from social bookmarking sites using the “Tag and ping” technique

It will help put your site on the Internet map and if done right, Tag and Ping will deliver plenty of targeted traffic to your blog/website. It will boost your rankings as well. Just make sure you’re using some Ping and Tag marketing techniques to harvest all those links, traffic and sales for your site. If this is still confusing to you, one simple way to ping your tags/blogs is to use a site like: http://pingomatic.com/ and it will automatically ping your blog in many of the most popular blogging services.

Social Communities & Networking Sites: Start creating profile on social community sites and forums & build your network. Many forums allows signature links on every thread. Strong networking can bring lots of visitors to your site with quality back links.

Join The Bloggers Groups: You can join relevant bloggers groups. By writing some quality post you can get traffic to the blog and some back links also.

Offer something FREE: You can offer valuable information on something that an end-user finds useful, such as free tools, industry specific reports etc. This is the Natural Link Building process as an end-user finds something on a web site that they feel is useful and they create a link to it.

Affiliate Linking – Affiliate link building is one of the most prominent ways to increase you customer base and sales without actually making a lot of efforts when compared to other marketing techniques. These services are beneficial for increasing sales. These are usually especially strong, and easily obtained one-way backlinks because normally they don’t have a bunch of other links diminishing the value of your backlink.

Squidoo is a great way to support affiliate product reviews. Just create a new account & write an overview for each product review in its own lens. Tag the lens as much as possible & participate in as many groups as possible. Next interlink all the lenses together and link back to your affiliate website.

Similarly, Qassia is a good way to get the one way links. Post some intels and you will get one way links and some good traffic from other members.

Write about others: If you want links from some influencial sites then this tactic can be very useful. You just need to write a news article about the individual or company with some authenticity and request a quote from them. Once they know you’re writing about them, make sure to send them a copy of the press release or story once it hits.

Links from Classified Ads: This type of advertising is very useful to get backlinks, traffic & sales, including a short summary (text based) and telephone number for contact. There are other details presented with certain free classified ads, including the name of the company, service or product provided, website link and detailed descriptions. Sometimes the backlink marked no-follow so does not count for Google, but some search engines ignores the no-follow, so counts with them. You can submit several ads for different products/niches within different categories and some local directories as well.

Similarly, sites from Citysearch & Yellow Pages to Google Maps provides global, local links if you sign up with them. You can find local business dircetories & yellow pages where you can list your business for free.

Check competitors’ links: This may sound unscrupulous but it is one of the most effective ways to build relevant links. Firstly, you have to search pages that link to your competitors’ sites and get those sites to link to you as well. You can easily get the relevant links because the site is already linking out to people in your industry. This will consume less time as we need not to invest much time in searching the relevant websites/ directories for linking. The most effective ways to find your competitors’ links are listed below:

1. At Yahoo! type linkdomain:url.com -site:url.com
2. At MSN’s techpreview type link:url.com -site:url.com
3. At Yahoo! type link:http://www.url.com
4. At Google type “url.com” -site:url.com

These are typically the most reliable way to find the sites and pages that link to your competitors and, incidentally, those sites which link to you.

Keep track on updates in your industry: Have a quick trigger finger on popular news sites that allow comments and try to be one of, if not, the first comment and mention a URL on your site that better explains your point or offers more insight.

Link thru Wikipedia: . Create a page related to unexplored topics in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis. Don’t link directly your site but try to add links to other pages that link to your site. Try to add your link in the “discussion” section for the page. This way, you get a real, non-nofollow, indexable link from Wikipedia and you are at a much lower risk of pissing off the community of editors.

Links from partners: See if your manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.

So these are some of the great ways to get the quality backlinks.
But don’t forget that the link growth should be as natural as possible. If you are running a link building campaign than even try to make it as natural as posibe with these ways:

1- Anchor text should varies

2- Link growth should not be too high & should be natural, so control the frequency

3- Limit the reciprocal no. or can go for 3 way linking

Path of learning does not have any cul-de-sac therefore this post cannot be treated as a complete guide; rather it will act as a briefing for beginners and catalyst for mid level enthusiasts.
After going through the post, I will encourage you to submerge yourself into the web and figure out what is relevant to you as new things come up almost daily.

The more you are intact with the updates, better you understanding would be on the subject. Happy learning……

Reference Resources:

http://seomoz.org/

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Tags: 3 way links, backlinks, free links, Link Building, link building guide, link PR, link resources, natural links, one way links, quality links