Google Webmaster Tools says that in order to gain Page Rank (a way of gaging website authority, PR is gaged from 0-10, 10 being highest) you should have high quality sites linking to yours, which is termed a backlink. A backlink is simply a link to your website from another website.
There are several types of link building strategies and all of them should be utilized to optimize your sites for the search engines which in turn will increase our traffic, so build links everyday
1. Relevant/Reciprocal Link Exchange
Reciprocal links are where you exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours. AS far as Google is concerned relevance equals quality as far as a backlink is concerned.
There are some webmasters who exchange links with any and all sites. But if you have a website about weight loss, how helpful is it for your visitors to see a link to a car auction site? This is a weak link and a useless waste of time and looks lame on your website! Build links for your visitors and not for ranks and your site will be rewarded.
The two most important factors in finding reciprocal link exchange partners are relevance and Page Rank, relevance being first important and page rank second. If you can get both then that's great. If you're site is new higher rank pages are hard to get, so don't worry about it and just look for relevance.
Where you place links on your site is important and can be done in several ways. While many still use a links page, this method is not the best option. These days search engines place less value on links pages and when you think about it, how good is a links page for your site and its visitors?
A better option is to place your links and get the reciprocal site to place links as hyperlinks within the content on your site with relevant anchor keywords. This method looks better, provides a natural flow of links and gets more link juice from the search engines and especially Google.
The key to link building on your sites is to make the link look like a side effect and not the end goal.
2. One Way Links
A one-way link is where you get a link to your site from another site without having to place a link back. Of course, one-way links hold the most juice with search engines.
When your site is new it is unlikely that you will get relevant high PR sites to give you a one-way link, unless of course you provide great content or a link bait (explained below).
Natural One-Way Link Building through Content
One of the best ways to get one way links is the natural link method which can be obtained by posting fresh original content on your sites that is so good it makes other websites want to link to it. Good content, which should all ready be a first priority for your visitors and visitor retention, will facilitate natural one-way links.
Link Bait
Another great way to build one way backlinks is to use a link bait on your site. This is the method of choice to get get higher page rank sites to link to lower page rank sites. Link Bait is basically any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. These link baits could be, information hooks, news hooks, humor hooks, tools hooks like a widget or some helpful tool that other sites can use.
Article Marketing and submitting your sites to Internet Directories are very effective ways to get one-way links.
3. 3-Way Links
3-ways: Site A points to Site B and Site B points to Site C and Site C points back to Site A. The point is to try to make reciprocals look like one-ways, this method really doesn't have much value and I don't recommend it.
4. Outbound Links
Outbound links are the websites you link to or site as references within content. Whatever your niche there authority and other helpful sites for your visitors and and those are the sites that you want to link to.
Some webmasters are so afraid of losing traffic or giving up their link juice that you hardly ever see outbound links on their sites, this is a big mistake.
Outbound links are a necessary part of establishing your authority within your niche and a vital part of your Internet Marketing efforts. They are a vital part of any website/blog and their existence or non-existence can determine whether high-authority, high page rank sites would ever link to you, mainly because if you are not consistently seeking out new information and intelligence within your niche and citing those sources they will view your website as stale and out of date.
Take a look at the authority sites within your niche, they all have outbound links and references. It is impossible to provide really useful information without offering other sites that can benefit your visitors.
In conclusion, it is crucial for any Internet Marketing Campaign to build links everyday. This is the main way that Google can establish authority, relevance and importance to your websites and is at the center of the search engine optimization strategy.
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