The strategies I am going to reveal in this article are tailored for getting excellent search engine rankings in Google. The reason that am solely going to concentrate on Google is because it is the largest search engine on the planet. In other words, most of the strategies I will reveal will also get faster rankings in other search engine such as Yahoo and MSN. But to be honest with you, Google is where the "real battle" play and that's where I will concentrate. Link Building Basics
You see, the search engine algorithms are always changing. But throughout all the search engine madness, there are some link building principles that have stood the test of time. That said, one of these axioms that has lasted is that it is the quality and quantity of back links to your site that determines your position in the search engines.
Google is smart enough to determine if a site has high quality links and delivering quality content relevant to the searched keyword. If a site has bad content, others will not want to link to them and Google will penalize them with a lower ranking. So, you see, in essence, the quality and quantity of links connecting to a site is one factor that determines the quality of the site and in turn, search engine ranking.
Another determinant in link building is the "anchor text" of a link. This is defined as the text in the link on a site. For example, if I have a site about 'making money online' and am trying to optimize for that keyword, I'll try to get as many sites as possible to link to mine with 'make money online' as the anchor text. This tells the search engines that the site is indeed about 'make money online' and will give more weight to that link. Whereas if the anchor text is 'teaching your parrot how to talk' the search engine will not give that link much weight.
Google also gives more weight to a link that has anchor text relevant to the site. For example, the site that's linking to me in the above example has to be about "make money online" if they are going to give extra weight to that link. It's another way to determine that the user is finding what they are looking for and they'll reward relevant links by giving you a higher ranking.
You'll also want to link to high "PageRank" sites. This is Google's proprietary ranking system that rates the authority of a site. The higher the PageRank the better, and linking to a high PageRank sites gives more "link weight" then a lower PageRank site.
To determine the PageRank of any site, you can download the Google Toolbar at:
www.google.com/toolbar
or
you can scroll to the bottom of my blog and use the check website status.
Another thing you want to remember is that you want to build your links organically. Google is smart enough that they can determine if backlinks are generated via automated means or manually. In other words, if you add too many backlinks too fast, it may appear that you're obtaining these links artificially. Therefore you want to take it slow when it comes to link building as Google prefers a natural progression of backlinks to a site.
Overall, Google not only gives weight to the quantity but also the quality links coming into your site.You see, their purpose is to make sure the user gets what they are searching for when they enter a search query. Now that you have an understanding of the link building basics, let's delve into how you can get top-quality links to your site. But first let's get something out of the way... Content Is King
If you want to boost your chances of getting quality links to your website, you have to have compelling, relevant content on your website. To be honest with you, the day of spammy Adsense sites and keyword stuffing to get high search engine rankings are over. You see, the search engine have smartened up and are now giving weight to website that have relevant, useful content based on what the searcher is looking for.
Sure, there will always be someone who exploits a loophole to spam his way to the top of the search engine, but Google always catches them. In fact, they've gotten so smart that they'll penalize you for having too many keywords on a website, as they see it as a sign of keyword stuffing and a bad user experience.
Another reason you want to have compelling content is to give a reason for people to link to you. Some of the strategies I'll share involve asking other websites to place a link in their websites with the appropriate anchor text. Your site has to have great content if people are going to want to link to you. You see, It's just common sense, they don't want to link to a poor site because it will reflect poorly on their site.
Before I talk further about link building strategies, let me caution you that link building is a tedious task. It takes a lot of patience and determination. So let's talk about how to get quality links to your site. Link Building On Steroids
One way to get your site some instant "link love" is to post content on social networking sites. Here are some of the big ones:
* Digg.com * StumbleUpon.com * Reddit.com * Deli.ci.ous.com
There are hundreds of other social networking sites out there you can use to get some immediate backlinks to your site.
Why does this work? You see, most of the social networking sites have extremely high PageRank ranking. They also require little effort to get backlinks as you don't need anyone's approval to post. That said, you absolutely must be responsible when using the social networking sites to get backlinks, as they can ban you if you spam, post too many promotional websites or don't "give back" to the social networking community by rating other sites.
To be honest with you, Social networking sites are also effective because Google loves them. For low competition keywords, social posting on Digg could get you indexed and ranked on the first page of Google within 15 minutes. I'm not kidding. You see, This is a common occurrence if you host your content on Web 2.0 platforms like Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com that already have high PageRanks.
You can post to numerous social sites by using SocialPoster.com, which automates social posting to over 40 social networking sites. It saves a lot of time, where otherwise you would have to manually submit at each site. Again, use this tool judiciously and make sure you read the terms of service for all the networks.
Also, make sure the content you are posting is relevant to the community. For example I wouldn't post a story about knitting in Digg, as the community is mostly young, tech-savvy males. This would be better suited for Sk-rt.com, a female centric social networking site listed on socialposter.com
There is much more to link building, but with what you've learned in this article, I know you'll have plenty work to do. Start creating a link building system so that it doesn't become an afterthought. Then, when you are rolling in the money, you can easily transfer the system to an outsourced worker who can take the job over for you.
