Link Building for Search Engine Optimization

Link Building is the process of enhancing the Link Popularity of a web page by creating links to it from other domains, in order to increase Search Engine Ranking of that web page.

Although the major benefit of Link Building is to increase the rankings of a web page on Search Engines for different keywords, Link Popularity Building also helps increase the Page Rank (PR) of a web page, increase direct traffic, and help in deep indexing of a website.

Incoming links (also known as inbound links and non reciprocal links) have gained unprecedented importance in high ranking of your website. Major search engines (including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista) rely on off-page factors such as 'Link Popularity' to determine how important your site is. No web site optimization, no matter how well it is executed, is not sufficient to get you good rankings. A large number of quality incoming links will help your website beat your competition in the Search Engines Results.

It is important to note that all links are not created equal. The search engines evaluate the incoming links on various parameters to determine the value of each site linking to you. Some important aspects which search engines evaluate are - PageRank of the linking web page, total outgoing links on the linking web page, industry relevance of the linking web page, page relevance, keywords in anchor text, and more.

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Importance of Building Link Popularity

Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your website from other websites on the Web. Generally Search Engines consider your website important and rank it high in Search Engine Result pages (SERPs) if other websites link to your website. Link Popularity Building improves the Search Engine Ranking of your web page if done in specific ways. Besides an improved Search Engine Ranking, there are certain other benefits that your website derives from carrying out a Link Popularity Building Campaign.
In this article we list out other benefits of Link Popularity Building apart from an improved Search Engine Ranking. Link Popularity is usually viewed in isolation, and most of the people do not realize the complete benefits of a well-defined link building campaign. While improvement in Search Engine rankings for specific keywords is a very important objective of link building, it is not the "only" way a link building campaign can be beneficial to a website.

Listed below are the 7 benefits of Link Popularity Building:

1. Anchor Text. Anchor text is the text that falls within a hyperlink leading to another page. The Anchor Text of Incoming Links plays a major role in your website's ranking in the search engine result pages. Anchor text is very important from ranking point of view as your most important keywords are used in the links pointing to your website which help in gaining rankings in Search Engine Result Pages. For wider keyword coverage, you can work with different link text options. It is important to have a number of combinations of anchor texts and associated link texts, so that the linking does not have a fixed pattern that the search engines can detect. This has become even more significant due to recent Algorithm updates of major Search Engines. If you have more number of quality links pointing to your website, the keywords within your anchor text would benefit your website's ranking greatly for those particular keywords. The web page of your site that the link is pointing to should also be optimized for that keyword(s) in order to properly influence rankings.
   
   
2. PageRank. PageRank is Google's measure of importance assigned to a web page on a scale of 1 to 10. By undertaking a long-term link building campaign you can boost your website's PageRank and improve your website's ranking significantly. Most other major search engines have adopted this logic in their own algorithms in some form or the other, varying the importance they assign to this value in ranking websites in their search engine result pages. Search Engines consider your website more important if more links point to your website.
   
3. Direct Traffic. Link Popularity Building also benefits you by way of getting direct traffic to your website. Incoming links from other websites would surely pay high dividends, as users are likely to click on that link and visit your website, thus bringing you direct traffic. The links placed on relevant pages would enhance the amount of relevant traffic to your website. A well planned Linking Popularity Building Campaign can also help you target your potential customer market and thus increasing the amount of valuable traffic to your site and thus even help improve your sales to some extent.
   
4. Deep Indexing. Another important benefit of link popularity building is that a web page embedded deep in your website too stands good chance of being indexed by the search engines. An external link leading to a page embedded deep in your site would help that web page get indexed by the search engines, which would have otherwise taken a very long time (up to 6 months or more).
   While indexing a page, search engines would also index the links leading from that page even if they are embedded very deep in your site structure. Search engines while indexing that particular page would also learn about the other links within your website and move on to index other pages too.
   
   
5. Indexing Dynamic Pages. Many of the Search Engines used to find it difficult to index the dynamic pages. With links pointing to dynamic pages the search engines would index those dynamic pages too. Optimizing dynamic pages is little tricky, but you can have your dynamic pages rank well for various keywords with the help of Link Popularity Building techniques.
   
   
6. Wider Search Engine Coverage. Link Popularity Building gives your website wider search engine coverage. In many search engines you might have not submitted your website, but in due course of time, the search engines will identify and pick up links to your website from other websites they recognize and index your site.
   
   This includes some important paid search engines (such as MSN, Askjeeves) that you may not have submitted your website to them. All search engines do not list your website for free, but would pick a link to your website from other websites they recognize, and eventually list your website in their result pages.
   
   
7. Leading Competition. Link Popularity Building would also mean that your website stays ahead of your competition for your targeted keywords. More the number of Only Incoming Links pointing to your web pages, higher it gets ranked in the search engine results pages. Using your targeted keyword phrases in the links text would ensure a good ranking for your targeted keywords in the SERP's.

Types of Links

There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One way is to trade links (Link Exchange), where you give a link from the links Page on your site to the partner sites. The second method is to establish 'only-incoming' links also called 'one-way links' or 'Non-Reciprocal links'.

Only-Incoming Links. Only-incoming links are the links established on the other websites where you do not need to link back to them. There are various compelling reasons and methods to establish such one-way links which include linking back from a different website that you may own, publishing articles on sites, content syndication, listing in trade directories and giving out press releases in news networks.

Link Exchange. Link exchange is an easier way to establish links from other websites to your website. In link exchange process, you trade links with prospective partner sites by offering a link to their site from your own site. This method is a fast way to establish several hundred links to your website. However, it may not get you great benefits.

Only Incoming Links vs. Link Exchange. Google developed the PageRank algorithm to provide authentic and quality information while making it difficult for webmasters and site owners to contaminate the search results by artificially inflating their PageRank.

The new algorithm came into effect with the launch of Google in 1998. Google's PageRank was based on the logic that more the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.

As Webmasters realized the importance of PageRank, they found ways to artificially inflate their PageRank by manipulating direct link exchanges. This defeated the very essence on which the Google PageRank algorithm was build. To counter this, Google has constantly been fine-tuning and updating its algorithms.

The search engines are aware that a large number of sites are deploying link exchange campaigns to boost their site's PR. Search engines are working towards fine-tuning their algorithm to discount direct link exchanges in order to preserve the effect of their link popularity related algorithms and rationalize artificially inflated link popularity of sites.

While the algorithms are yet to fully reflect this change, we believe that it may happen soon enough. In the long run, we recommend investing your resources in an ' only-incoming links 'campaign for your website which is likely to benefit your site more as opposed to a direct link exchange campaign.

Important Parameters to Consider While Building Link Popularity

Some of the important parameters that you need to consider while establishing links with any website are discussed below:

PageRank or PR of the Linking Page. PR of the linking page is one of the most important factors. PR of the linking page determines how much value of importance is passed on to your page. Higher the PR of the linking page, higher the value you get. The home page PR is not as important, but it is an indicator of how much PR a linking page may jump to, in due course of time. For instance, if the PR of the site's link page is 0, but the home page PR is 6, then, there is a bright possibility that in a month or two, the link page PR may also jump to a PR of 4 or even 5 due to the internal linking structure of the partner site. While sites would be happy to give out links from a PR 0 page, you can estimate that in two months time, this link page can jump to a high PR, giving you great value in the future.

Identifying Total Number of Links on the Link Page. The value your web page gets from a linking page is equal to the total PR value of that page divided by the total number of outgoing links on that page. Getting a link from a PR4 page that has only 20 outgoing links is much better than getting a link from a PR4 page that has 60 outgoing links. With the same philosophy, it is better to get a link from a PR2 link page that has only 10 outgoing links than getting a link from a PR4 page that has over 100 outgoing links. It is therefore as important to evaluate the total number of outgoing links on a links page, as it is, to evaluate the PR of the linking page. This is where many people often falter, as they usually insist on getting a link from a high PR page, but if that page has 100 outgoing links, your page would only get 1/100th of that value.

Industry Relevance. Search engines give high importance to links pointing to your site from your own industry segment as opposed to those from an un-related industry. For instance, a hotels and reservations website is likely to benefit more from links pointing from a related industry site like travel, vacation packages or cruises, than those from an unrelated industry like a drug site.

Page Relevance. Most sites offering links have several categories listed on their sites. Try and get a link from a category that closely matches your own industry. For instance, if you have a site related to hotels, then, on your partner site, a tickets site for example, try and identify a resource directory pertaining to hotels, resorts, reservations, vacation packages, travel, tourism, food and beverages etc. If the concerned site has a directory on hotels, you should request a link in that category, as a link from that page would be relevant to a hotels site, thus getting you more benefits. An algorithm called "Applied Semantics" determines the industry relevance of a page within a site. Applied Semantics algorithm studies various keywords on a web page and tries to determine the industry or business segment of each page. Applied Semantics estimates the industry segments that are relevant to a particular page. If the link to your page is coming from your business specific segment, then you are likely to draw more benefit.

Anchor Text. Anchor Text is the visible hyperlinked text on a web page. Since anchor text is very important, make sure that your most important keywords appear in anchor text from the link pointing to your site. You should try and work with at-least 10-20 keyword and link text options. If you are creating a large number of links using only one standard link text, then the search engines are likely to detect a pattern. It is possible that future algorithm updates may do away with all repetitive and similar looking links to your site.

Pre-Indexed Pages. Try and find link partners in Search Engines like Google and Yahoo, and check if the links page is already indexed in the search engines. Search Engines frequently re-index the pages in its database. They are likely to detect your link faster on a page already existing in their database as compared to a 'yet-to-be indexed' page. The safest way to check is to copy the prospective link page URL and paste it into Google Search. If the page is indexed, Google would show a result in response to your search, otherwise it would respond with a 'no result found'.

The robots.txt file. robots.txt is an exclusion file that contains specific instructions for search engine robots regarding the content they are not allowed to index. Links placed on a page that the search engines robots are not allowed to index, would not benefit your site. Considering the importance of robots.txt file, it is a good idea to study a site's robots.txt file to identify the excluded pages before approaching a site for establishing links with your site.

Java Script Link Pages. It is also important to identify pages that are generated through Flash or a Java Script, as Search Engines cannot easily read flash pages or the links embedded within flash. These are some of the tricks unethical webmasters use. While a site can claim to have placed a link to your web page, in effect they are not giving you any benefit.

Re-Directed Links. A link that is first re-directed to another page within your partner site before pointing to your site is a re-directed link. You should watch out for such links, as search engines do not give weight to re-directed links. It is very unlikely that your site would draw any benefit from a re-directed link.

Frame Sites. Avoid getting links from framed sites as search engines cannot easily read texts within frames. A link placed on a frame site would not get your site any benefit, as search engines would not be able to recognize such a link.

Directory Depth. It is important to evaluate the depth of the directory of the linking page. Avoid getting links from pages that are embedded in a very deep directory or pages that are more than two directories deep (e.g. www.domain.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/links.php is not a good link page). Deep directories seldom earn high PR. They are also slow in getting indexed, if at all.

Building Link Popularity is a great way to help your site gain competitive PR. Links from other sites also sends direct human traffic to your site. Observing a little care in developing links will go a long way in getting your site rank high in search engines.