What is link building about?
2014 is upon us and we are all looking at the best way to proceed when it comes to building our online business.
If you have been actively involved in a marketing campaign of any sort recently then you would have heard of link building, ever wondered what it is all about?
If we look back at the techniques our SEO experts advised us were needed in order to build a solid place in the search engines there was a lot of importance placed on links.
The smart businesses took notice and have gone on to achieve better rankings and these have hopefully translated into increased business.
To give yourself a fighting chance with Google, Yahoo, Bing etc you need to be thinking about adopting a link building strategy now.
Why link building?
Link building has been controversial recently with many sites that sell links with the promise of giving better page rank being heavily penalised and even in some cases banned from Google. That said linking remains the best way of getting a boost as long as its done right, if you are linking to your website from content relevant sites, then you can gain some credence with the engines and get a well deserved raise.
From Matt Cutts, Googles search engine guru in a recent interview.
“Links are still the best way that we’ve found to discover (how relevant or important somebody is) and maybe, over time, social or authorship or other types of markup will give us a lot more information about that.”
Pagerank out, relevance ranking in
Google pagerank may be dead and buried but it has been replaced with relevance ranking.
Relevance ranking offers a far better experience for the end user and stops these link farms from being to manipulate the websites that people see on the first pages of the search results. By providing links from internet content that is relevant to your website you will offer your potential customer a seamless journey from search through to end product. A stress free journey will leave the user feeling like they ended up in the right place ( your site ) and will have them in the right mental state to end up with your end product.
Wrong ways
For every safe way of creating a good value link there are three unsafe ways not to do it, buying links, incorrectly optimised text, automated programs, these are a few ways to potentially damage your Google reputation and create a drop in search engine placement.
Google is smart
The right way is to ensure quality is continued thought out the process, make it a logical progression rather than a wild leap and Google will reward you.
Getting a link from a website selling chocolate, when you sell spark-plugs wont help your relevance ranking.Getting a link from a garage or mechanic will.
The introduction of Google’s knowledge graph in 2012 changed the way SEO is done for the better, in Googles words, its about things, not strings.
Its widened the user experience to include all subjects relevant to the original search, with this kind of algorithm in place Google will also ignore irrelevant information, such as your badly placed nonsense links.
Google Knowledge Graph info here
Finally
There are no ways to shorten the process in building high quality links. Spending a couple of hours a month on getting it right will keep the ranking reapers from your door.
There are no short cuts to achieve good, high quality, relevant links. It’s time consuming, but, it’s vital to making a success of your business.
For more information on starting an online marketing or SEO campaign please visit Getsmartbox Internet Marketing.
Written by
Mark White
Online Marketing Specialist|HigherSites® Group
