Link building What to DO, What NOT to DO?

Link building best practices for better search engine optimization – but what is Link building for SEO?

Link building is one of the techniques used in search engine optimization where search engine optimizers acquire inbound / back links to a website from relevant websites to improve search engine rankings. Every link pointing to the website is counted as a vote and the amount of quality back links your website has, the better. This will also help to boost the site page rank.

For example a real estate website can have inbound links from other realtor websites and also from industry sites like CMHC, homebuilders association etc. They are all related to the same industry and this helps Google and other search engines to rank the website high on search engines for any real estate keywords.

This process needs to be executed tactically without getting any reduction in search engine ranking positions (SERPs). Because of some link building practices one can get paid back links to the website to boost SERPs.  Basically some pay for website owners to purchase links. You may have heard link farms or link schemes, they are similar. Google always advised against buying links and if you suspect any website involved in the link forms you can report them to Google.

Black hat Link building – New York Times exposes J.C. Penny!

What New York times exposed about J.C. penny was that J.C. Penny has been participating in link schemes to gain high search engine rankings for certain keywords like “dresses”, “bedding”, “furniture” etc..They have been ranking for these terms like #1 on Google apparently for the entire holiday season. After the NYtimes exposed whole link scheme Google took manual penalty action on J.C. Penny website. Many of their keyword rankings are dropped from #1 placement to #68 – #70. Any search engine rankings beyond page 3 on Google virtually gets no traffic!

Link building best practices for SEO:

There isn’t any definite guide on link building best practices, the below are most commonly used best practices to build inbound links.

• Create something that has value for your community or industry; this will naturally create back links for your website.
• Create listings from local web directories; look for the free directories that only accept quality submissions.
• Participate in Q&A websites, offer your expertise to the community
• Look at your competitors, check their back links. If you have a common supplier or manufacturer you can get a link
• Write articles – submit them to many sites that publish your content for free
• Do press releases – you can write a press release about a new product or service you are offering
• You can also use affiliates – many of the affiliates have their own websites and request a back link from a featured page
• Create badges that will create back links to your website. Offer these badges for free
• Offer free tools, free information sessions or webinars and request for a free blog. Ask for people to share the link on social networking sites.
• Participate in forums – be a real person and offer something valuable for the forum, do not spam to get a link. You might get kicked out of the forum.
• Sponsor community events – generate press coverage and get a link back from all new paper websites
• Post job openings to industry authority websites and many free job posting sites

The article was previously published on Learn it 2 Earn it, by search engine marketing company “ROI Media Works”. You can find us on Facebook here: http://facebook.com/roimediaworks Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/roimediaworks