While we at Greenmedia are fully paid-up devotees of the ‘content is king’ school of SEO, we know that content makes up just part of a websites overall search rankings. One of the other big themes that we advocate, and really gets results, is link building. Link building should form a significant part of your SEO programme, and if you’re ignoring it then your search results will most likely be suffering – or at least not working to their fullest potential. So, what is link building? Link building – the process of getting your web address on other people’s websites – is roughly made up of four different approaches; 

• Buying links on directories – These can be as little as £30 per year, and many offer the chance to create a ‘profile’ style link containing your key USPs.
• Reciprocal links – Swapping links with like-minded people in your industry is a good way of getting your link out there. Be careful to avoid spammers offering these exchanges.
• Forums and blogs – Find an industry forum for your company and post a link. This can also stimulate debate on your products or services.
• Automated requests – Put a page on your site with instructions on how best to link to it.

 These four techniques are all as important as each other, and should be factored into your strategy ongoing. Once you’ve got a good level of links, keep going! The more the better, and the process becomes quicker and easier over time. 

Why is link building important? 

Two reasons; firstly, the more links you have out there, the more chance people have to end up on your website – meaning more visitors. Secondly, and most importantly, major search engines clock the amount of incoming links your website has, and if these links are relevant it means that your site has a good level of credibility in its field and must be worth looking at. Just the same way as good, relevant content creates the all-important good user experience, lots of relevant links suggest there’s something of value on your site with the same end-result.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 11:07 am and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.