Why Link Building

Link building is creating incoming links to a web site.  People use it both for increased direct click through traffic and for better search engine optimization (SEO).

Anyone with a web site wants more traffic, and there are many ways they obtain more traffic.  But two key traffic builders are:

  • Higher placement in search engines – people click mostly on links at the top of the results page, meaning the first ten links.  Number one is best.  High search engine placement delivers more traffic.
  • Direct click through – When people see interesting links, they click on them.  This includes banner ads, directory listings, and links in articles or reviews from other sites.  This is referrals from one web site to another.

Quality incoming links help create better search engine placement because search engines place more relevance on sites with a lot of incoming links.  The incoming links must be quality links, for example:

  • Search engines don’t consider an incoming link to a dog training site from a high traffic pornography site, with the link hidden in the page footer, a quality link.
  • Search engines do consider an incoming link from a Petsmart.com to a dog training site a quality link.

Quality incoming links also deliver more traffic on their own.  For example a webmaster or company better have a lot of traffic capability if Oprah.com recommends their site with a link.

List of Strategies to Build Links 

Link building is easy, but time consuming.  Strategies include:

  • Hire an SEO consultant who manages link building in addition to other tasks.
  • List the site in directories of similar sites.
  • Exchange links with similar sites.
  • Purchase banner ads on high traffic sites with a similar demographic.  For example a site selling skateboards buys a banner ad on a site teenage boys visit.  Depending on the type of banner ad, this type of link building may not result in a search engine friendly inbound link.

 Conclusion

Web sites need traffic, and link building creates traffic.  SEO experts know how to build links – in the long run using these experts is the most cost effective link building strategy.