Link Building As A Search Engine Marketing Tactic
Search engine marketing is the practice of influencing a website’s rankings by increasing their visibility in the search engines. It is generally thought of as existing in two branches: Paid search and organic search.
Link building falls into the organic search model, which generally is defined as the process of building web pages with search engine optimization in mind and increasing a page’s chances of ranking higher in the search engine results. On-page factors alone generally are not enough to hold search engine rankings long term. Hence, the reason for link building.
Link building seldom does well by itself, however. A poorly defined website with poorly written content will not be made better with great link building. If your link building succeeds you will only be successful at driving traffic to poor websites.
But if your website is well written, has a great design, and your on-page SEO is excellent then great link building can give your site a real boost in the search engine rankings. And if you do any paid search marketing, your paid ads existing alongside your organic search listings will be much more effective. That’s when you know that your search engine marketing efforts are really paying off.
Two Branches Of SEO
There are two branches of SEO that every website owner should be familiar with. There’s on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
Your on-page SEO consists of keyword management, meta tags, alt tags, navigation, and other elements that exist on your page to help you produce effective SEO for your website. Off-page SEO consists of anything you do off of your website, such as building links, that produces SEO benefits.
One of the best things you can do off page is to list your website in directories. Many webmasters don’t know it, but you can submit your internal web pages to deep link directories and build links to those internal pages.
Neither on-page SEO or off-page SEO is more important. On-page SEO, of course, must come first. And it should really be your focus in the early days of website development. But after your website is built you’ll need to focus on link building and off-page SEO.
How Niche Search Engine Marketing Pays The Bills
Search engine marketing is the process of using search engines to drive traffic to your web pages, primarily through search and paid search platforms. Crafty Internet marketers do this by focusing on niche-related keywords in their marketing efforts. How does that work exactly?
For starters, you’ve got to build value into your marketing campaign in your keyword research. This should be your first step in the process. Look for the best and most profitable keywords for your niche and focus your marketing efforts on those. After you’ve identified the best keywords, put them into a list and build your web pages to focus on those keywords with each page focused on a primary and a secondary keyword. Then build links using your keywords as anchor text.
Try a PPC campaign as a test campaign on one or two of your keywords and attempt to drive traffic to a keyword-based landing page. As you do this, note your CTR. If you are getting a high CTR on any keywords then focus on those keywords for building more web pages and for increasing the search engine presence of others you’ve already built.
Search engine marketing is not hard, but it is tedious. You can build value into any niche if you know the basics.
Is On-Page SEO More Important Than Link Building?
I was discussing link building today with a friend and we both agreed that link building is important. But neither one of us were willing to say it was the most important thing. You can build all the links you want to a poorly optimized website and you likely won’t get too far. But we’ve all seen the results of the Google Bomb, right? The problem is, one algorithm change and those bombs blow.
But on-page optimization is fairly constant. If you stick the basics – good content, clean code, fast load times, light on the images, proper keyword management, internal navigation – then your website should do well. Inbound links can never serve as a substitute for poor on-page optimization.
However, if you have a well optimized website with all the right design and content elements then a good link building campaign can enhance it tremendously. Link building should be seen as a supporting activity for good on-page SEO. It shouldn’t be a primary optimization tactic.
Can Links Really Be Permanant?
It’s no big secret that link building is a large part of any Search Engine Optimization campaign, but when it comes to link building strategies, there seems to be some confusion over the meaning of the word “permanant” in relation to link building.
There basically are two kinds of links: permanant and no follow. Anyone will tell you that permanant links are better for link building than no follow links, because no follow links contain an extra string of code that tells search engines not to “follow” them, or in other words, don’t track this link. Obviously, this wont help a search engine find your site through that particular link. However, another use of the word permanant in relation to link building is describing whether or not a link obtained will have lasting value.
A permanant link might suggest that link will be there permanantly, or that it allows search engines to track it. All permanant links can be tracked, and links from higher quality sites will have more weight, but no matter where you get your links, all will lose value over time. There is a good reason for this.
SEO is an ongoing process, and search engines make sure that it is. Sure, everyone would love to be able to simply build a link campaign and leave it be, allowing it to continually add weight to your pages search rankings, but that would be pointless, as everyone would have the same ability to build it and leave it, and therefore all link campaigns would be equal and no one would be able to take advantage of this convenience.
The trick to successful link building has to be the knowledge coupled with the ongoing process. SEO’s are busy at work, not only continually building links, but analyzing the data to find new strategies for building links. In this way of link building, irrelavant sites which lack current inbound links will lose weight, and this makes more sense compared to a real world scenario. For example, a restaurant with a lot of good reviews during its first year, but no good reviews during its second year. If those first year reviews had as much weight as the second year reviews, anyone looking for a good place to eat during that third year would be under the impression that it was a great place to eat, despite the fact that for a solid year following those reviews, their food and service went down in quality.
Likewise, links used in a link building campaign must continually be obtained, and the quality of those links should be good as well. So the question of whether or not links can be permanant should be answered with a no, because SEO must be an ongoing process in order to ensure that more relavant and current content is being returned in search results.
Natural Links are the Key to Any SEO Campaign
I may be stating the obvious when I say that buying links can get expensive. I may also be doing so by informing you that there will come a day when this practice will no longer be effective for Search Engine Optimization. Well, that day may come a lot sooner than you expect. In fact, that day could very well be today.
As many already know, Google has pioneered the way for optimal search engine return. This wasn’t the result of investments or big spending, necessarily, but rather the result of a complicated algorithm which calculated importance, relevance, and the overall natural appearance of links to a given site. It should then come as no surprise that if a link looks bought, then it won’t do you any good.
Back in the hay day of SEO, metatags were sufficient to improve the ranking and serch query position of a website. Then the search engines caught on and that no longer worked. What came to follow was the random placement of links all over the Internet, from directory listings to link farms. This is no longer as effective as it once was, and Google has even penalized high profile websites for this strategy. What is needed, then, is natural links. An example of a natural link is a blog that is informative on a subject matter, linking to a business which deals in that subject matter. This could be the result of the blogger knowing the business personally, or because they simply have used their product or service, and were satisfied with the results. Either way, this link was not paid for, nor is it located on a site simply filled with other links on the subject; and furthermore, the link is surrounded by text pertaining to the subject, which adds relevance to the link.
However, for most businesses, there are not enough people out there who are willing to write about, and link to, their site for this completely natural link building to be effective. There is a very thin line between white and black hat SEO practices, but there are many ways to get natural links, without crossing this line.
Among these methods, many can be inexpensive or even free, but the process is very time consuming. There is a reason for this, as a search result should not simply show sites for businesses that spend a lot on an SEO campaign. If all one had to do was to buy as many links as possible, then that would be the case. However, what is required is a tactical, intentional, placement of links from quality sources. Although this can cost money, the more important part of any SEO campaign is the knowledge of how to do so, and the amount of time put into it.
Understandably, many businesses do not have the time aspect on their side, which is why there are Internet Marketing Firms to assist with those needs. Instead of spending an entire iMarketing budget on expensive links that do little to nothing for your site, consider the option of consulting and working with a firm that specializes in the area. Likely, your ROI will be much higher.
Building Links For Natural Search Using Guest Posting
- Do you have your own blog already?
- Is the topic of the blog relevant to your business?
- Do you trust the administrator of the site not to altar your posts in a way that could damage your reputation or efforts?
- Do you have enough free time to consistantly write blog posts?
- Do you have enough content to consistantly post?
- Are you a decent enough writer to not have your posts frowned upon when compared to the usual on-site content?
- Are you sacrificing good content on your own blog for the posts on your guest blogs?
- Is the information in the posts between your blog and your guest blogs varied enough?
Four Easy and Free Ways to Build Links
Linking is the key to any natural search-oriented campaign. While Pay Per Click increases the visibility of your website through strategic keyword building, natural search is a combination of on page and off page optimization. The main difference between the two, as to how you achieve a desired visibility status, is the importance of your site. A site of lesser importance, as determined by Google’s complex algorithm, can obtain the first position in searches utilizing a PPC campaign. While it is possible for the same site to appear within the top 3 for natural searches, it is less likely, and therefore natural search depends more on page rank for a site’s position. The similarity between the two is the keyword relevance to the search.
While it would be nice for your website to appear number one for every search, this is not practical. Via a PPC campaign, this mis-targeted traffic would cost you thousands, maybe more, as the majority of clicks would not take the user to a site relevant to that for which they searched. It would make no sense for a law firm website to show up in the top spot for a “heavy equipment training” search query. The purpose of search engines is to return relevant results, not just high ranking sites. The rank is factored in only to represent the importance and usability of the site itself, generally determined by relevant links. Here are four steps for building relevant links to your site, for free:
Social Media Optimization - this may not be the most efficient approach, as far as time is concerned, but the use of Social Media can prove very effective for the initial campaign. Simply, it puts your website on the map. The main quality to look for in a Social Media Site is the ability to add direct links with custom anchor text. This is possible through your profile, various groups, or occasionally, through message systems which allow users to contact each other, via their profile pages. It should be note, however, that many SM profile sites utilize no follow links, which will not benefit keyword relevance of links. Much like relevant pages on a website linking to each other, if only for ease-of-use, consider the network of pages linked to each other on a site such as MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog. It is important to exercise self control with such links, as irrelevant links may be read as spam or abuse of the site. Be sure to read the terms of use for such sites, as violation of such terms can result in the deletion of your account.
Forums – actively participating in forum discussions can increase the online visibility of your company greatly. Choosing a username on said forum that represents your company’s name or primary keyword will increase the relevance of posts, and posting within categories related to your business, its name or its purpose, will increase its importance. Much like social media sites, many forums will have no follow links, so use caution. The best way to utilize a forum is to set up your own. This gives you full control over comments, link properties, posts, and categories. Additionally, relevant traffic generally increases on forums as it allows others to participate in discussions and talk about their own interests in relation to your site.
Free Article and PR Sites – articles and press releases are a great way to build relevant links to your site, and its sub domains, as well as increasing your online availability through referred traffic. Additionally, you have full control over the surrounding text, and many free article sites allow you to include multiple links within the content. An article site might also feature a well-written, highly viewed article on the front page, and if nothing else, feature the submission in a category section related to your article or press release, which will have a URL containing very relevant text.
Blogging – much like article sites, setting up a blog is another good way to build links with more relevance and rank behind them. The only difference is, you can also optimize the blog itself, utilizing your social media profiles, and the articles/pr you’ve written. You may also include links to your blog from your site and forum posts. Cross linking relevant content on your blog and your site, as well as all other areas of the web you maintain, can be quite the task, but well worth the effort and time. Additionally, blogging allows for minimal effort in organizing, coding and optimizing content. Since posts are automatically sorted by date, category and tags, this is an easy way to quickly add content with little hassle; plus, adding images makes your blog more vivid, wont clutter the screen as much, and when ALT tags are properly used, will return links to your blog via image searches. Also, if said images are hosted on your site’s domain, this will add to the relevance of the blog to your site and the use of such images within your blog. You may be hosted on a Blog Site if you wish, but it is generally preferable to be self-hosted, as it implies that your site is more important.
These are only the basics of free link building, and as effective as these may be, there is only so much you can achieve with this method – it really depends on your niche. If you are fighting over less common, less desired, or more unique keywords, these tactics may be enough to put your site on the charts, even at the top spot in searches for those keywords. However, more competitive keywords require more variation, dedication, time, and resources.
When it comes down, most businesses don’t have the time or man-power within the company to embark on a campaign of such magnitude. Consider an experienced, well established, Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting to aid you in this endeavor.