Link building is one of the most important aspects of a successful search engine optimisation campaign. Although optimising your site for relevant keywords, appropriate meta tag descriptions and content is important, developing external links to your website will set your website apart from the competition.

Search engines see external links as an indication of relevancy and a signal that the content being linked to is of interest and value. As soon as your website content is identified as such by a search engine, your online visibility will increase and your page rank with it.

The most important websites in terms of receiving links are websites for government agencies, hospitals, universities and respected organisations. If a site of this type creates a link to your website, your link popularity will increase substantially as search engines consider links from these sites as credible and high quality referrals. In order to get quality websites to link your website, the content must be interesting and appealing.

In addition to evaluating the quality of the websites linking to your website, it is important to develop as many links as possible. The larger the number of websites linking to your website, which is commonly referred to as link popularity, the more value a search engine assigns to your website.
In order to determine which websites that are presently linking to your website, type link:www.yourdomainname.com in a search engine of your choice. The results of this search query will be a listing of all websites that are currently linking to your website.

There are many ways of establishing external links. However, the most common linking strategies are the following:

•      One way links
•      Reciprocal links
•      Three way links

One Way Linking

A one way link is when a website links to your website without a link having to be reciprocated. The most common means of creating one directional links is through directory submission. Directories list your business amongst others in a categorised manner. Directory submission can be the quickest and most productive means to create links.

Before making submissions to directories, it is important to create a submission script detailing the relevant keywords that relate to your site and a description of your business. It is also important to prepare a good quality company logo to display alongside your company description.
The following are examples of existing directories:

•       General Directories
•       Paid Directories
•       Reciprocal Directories
•       Niche Directories
•       Free Directories

In terms of choosing the directories to which to submit your company, it is imperative that the directories are of high quality and relevancy. Depending on your business, your sector of activity and the industry in which you operate, a given directory might be more suited than another for your website. In terms of submissions to free directories, you may wish to create a free email address through yahoo, hotmail or gmail as the company contact email address in order to avoid spamming. 

Press releases are another great way for creating one way links and generating awareness of your brand, websites and products. For more information on press releases, please visit our article on press releases.

Reciprocal Linking

The second type of linking is reciprocal linking and involves the exchange of links between two websites. To begin reciprocal linking, it is important to prepare a list of websites that could be potential partners for reciprocal linking. The industry that you are operating within and the quality of the website are important considerations when evaluating potential partners. For example, if you’re selling socks online, the best websites to target would be those selling shoes, boots and other footwear. These sites will not view your business as competition as your products are in fact complementing their own.

The second important consideration is the quality of the website that you are considering linking to. Page Rank is a great tool to evaluate the quality of a potential website.  To include the Page Rank tool, download the Google tool bar for your browser and tick the accept radio button. From then on, once you type the domain name of any website into your browser, the Page Rank of the site will appear.  In terms of evaluating the Page Rank of a potential partner, it is usually advisable to create links to sites that have a higher Page Rank than your own website.

Three Way Linking

Three way linking is not a very common way of linking and its legitimacy is doubted. Three way linking involves linking between three or more websites. For example website (A) links to website (B) and website (B) links to website (C) and the latter links to website (A). 

For more information on link building or the online marketing services we offer, please call +353 1 855 8860 or e-mail info@continuumonlinemarketing.ie .