Link building is seen as the part two of any Search Engine Optimization campaign, after on-site optimization. Link building is a crucial element when it comes to keeping up your site ranking and making your site trustworthy in the eyes of search engines.

As an ongoing campaign required to enhance inbound links of a website, link building is a powerful key for brand promotion and general visibility to search engines. It also boosts exceptional visitors to your website which eventually translates to increased conversions. The efforts involved in link building would include blogging, local profiles, social networking, blog commenting, online publicity, directory submission and others.

The whole essence of developing a link building strategy is to generate links from multiple, distinct, but related sources over a period of time. Majority of the strategies employed in link building range from three months to 1 year, and would integrate a wide range of scheduled monthly tasks – about 10-20. It is very essential that you create an excellent specific link building schedule and stay on to it. If you embark on a marathon links expansion spree, search engines will raise the eye of suspicion on your website, and this can turn out as an ill effect on your reputation.

How It Works

The initial step to creating link building strategy is to carry out a link audit on your site; you will do the same for your site’s three top competitors. A helpful tool for analyzing your site is Google Webmaster Tools; then, Link Diagnosis would be helpful in analyzing your competitors. These two services are free! With a link audit, you will be able to establish a baseline strategy by ascertaining the number of one-way links that are pointing towards your website already.

It is possible for an audit to generate return with up to 100,000 (or less) one-way links pointing traffic to your various web pages. However, this will depend on the size and age of your website. You may not need to visit the entire 100,000 links, but it is very necessary that you take appropriate sample (at least 1000) of the links listed; then, go to each link to evaluate what kind of link it is. This is what it means to create a link portfolio.

In the course of the link audit, watch out for "Undesirable" links - links from sites like gambling or adult sites. Search engines closely monitor links from these types of sites. A site that has more of these links is at risk of losing value in the eyes of search engines. Just as the same way that trust is necessary between you and your existing or potential customers, trust is also an essential element between your site and the search engines. The trust factor on a website can be dented by increased number of "bad" links.

With the right link building strategy, you will not only achieve an enhanced traffic generation, but will also come across an increasing base of quality customers.