Link building is undeniably the most important and most challenging part of an SEO strategy. The quest is never-ending. It can (as Google originally hoped) happen natural, as in time your site is so interesting and popular that people naturally link to it on their sites. But if you are not getting traffic, how do people even know about your site to link to it? And if your site is new, how can you compete with the tens of thousands of links that older sites have developed?

Inbound links affect a site’s ranking in search in a more profound way than on page and URL info. The classic example of how powerful inbound links are is to search ‘click here’ and you see Adobe. Adobe is not about “click here”, and the words ‘click here” do not appear anywhere on the page or the source code. But so many sites have linked to Adobe with the words ‘click here’ that it ranks highest for that term.

Link building is time consuming and intimidating. It is not easy to obtain the right mix of links. Many webmasters begin and then lose interest. Site owners as well need to be spending their time managing their business, not constantly beefing up their links.  Also having industry connections, knowing what a good or bad link is, knowing shortcuts to obtaining links is incredibly valuable. A link campaign can be easily mismanaged when not handled expertly. We have had to fix many clients link profiles.

Understanding how link building works can alleviate fears and doubts that surround this portion of SEO work. We will explain to you how and why we are building your link campaign the way we do, so you can concentrate on running your business.

1. Number of links: sites with higher quantity of inbound links rank higher and have higher PR.
2. Authority of site: inbound links that count as the biggest votes typically are harder to obtain. A high PR, edu, gov, authority quality sites.
3. Links from sites relative to your industry: If the entire site is themed to your industry, it is considered more of an authority on the topic and thus an inbound link from here will be weighted more.
4. Anchor text of link: the words sites use to link to you are attributed to your site’s authority level on that topic. This must be balanced to maintain natural linking, with varying keywords.
5. Age of links: links mature and increase in value over time
6. Link Velocity: build links more rapidly than your competitors. Once ahead, stay ahead by building more and better links than competitors. Link building started 10 years ago, so a site starting today is 10 years behind. Every day that link building is ignored, the gap between you and your competitor widens. Also building too quickly compared to your overall number of links can look unnatural.
7. Age of site: on new sites, inbound links are assigned a lower weight.
8. Links in Content: anchor text linked in a page of content is harder to obtain than a signature or footer link, thus more valuable.
9. One way links: swapped reciprocal links are not as valuable as one way links.