Link building is one of the most important and most effective methods in SEO. Employing a solid link building strategy is one of the best ways to increase organic traffic and boost your search engine rankings as well. In this article I will go into the anatomy of the link building process so you can gain a better understanding of how inbound links work and how to tweak your strategy for maximum results.

Dofollow vs Nofollow

There are a couple distinct differences in inbound links. There are dofollow and nofollow links. Both feature advantages and disadvantages. Dofollow means that any link juice will be passed on from the site through the link to your site. A nofollow link is the exact opposite. Traffic and visitors can get to your site, but search engine spiders will not follow the link and your site will not receive any "link juice."

It is important to know the difference when you are building inbound links to your website. You will be putting in the time and effort, so be sure that you are being rewarded for your work. One good and fast way to check is by adding the SEO for Firefox extension. This handy tool will help you decipher if links on a particular page are dofollow are nofollow.

Anchor text

Another important factor in your link building strategy is using targeted anchor text in your inbound links. Each page on your website is a doorway page and an individual opportunity for new visitors to find your site. A good link building method that produces powerful results is using your target keywords for the page you are building links for in the anchor text of the link. For example, instead of having your link say yourcompany.com or click here, you could have your keyword hyperlinked.

Link diversity

Link diversity is another important aspect. Link diversity helps your link building strategy look more natural to the search engines. This means finding multiple different ways to build inbound links to your website. Find a good mixture of industry and authority sites to link to you and use a combination of 2-3 of your targeted keywords for that page. Mix some nofollow links in as well.

Continuity

Think of link building as an ongoing campaign with no end date. By now your competitors are seeing value in SEO, so you should never stop building inbound links to your website. It takes a lot of links to rank well for your desired keywords and it will take continuous improvement to keep your rankings.