Link Building Strategies for Webmasters

A link is clickable link from one webpage to another webpage or website. It is technically known as an HREF. Links pointing to your website are called 'inbound links'. Links which you place on your website pointing other websites are called 'outbound links'. The more inbound links your website has, relative to competitors, the higher your search engine rankings. Search engines mathematically score the 'quality' of every inbound link by applying a range of weighting factors. The greater the number of higher quality links and relevant links, the better for your website. Extra credit is given where the anchor text of the inbound link closely matches the content of your page it points towards.

Similarly, the inbound link should ideally come from a high quality webpage – ideally a homepage. So it becomes easy to understand that an inbound link posted in a 'links directory' is valued less by search engines, than a link posted on a 'content page' (that is rich in semantic textual content). The number of links on the page that your inbound link is placed on is also relevant. Don't swap links with sites where the page has 30 or so more outbound links on it.

Link baiting is a never ending process that never stops (because you competitors won't). The number of links to your site will naturally increase over time. Other webmasters link back to your website without your knowledge. When you launch a site, research how many quality links you need, by looking at the number and type of links and 'backlinks' from your competitor sites. Use the following search syntaxes:-

• your-competitor.com  - gives a measure of all general links back to the site
• site:your-competitor.com  - gives a measure of all the pages of the site
• link:www.your-competitor.com  - gives a measure of all the backlinks to the site

Reciprocal link exchange involves two webmasters swapping or exchanging links. It is the most commonly used tactic to boost link popularity. Link popularity is a crude measure of the quantity of inbound links from other websites, pointing back towards your website. The exchange process is normally initiated via the exchange of speculative e-mails between two webmasters. Most websites have a 'useful resources page’. They are commonly used to swap links or to redirect traffic away to related 'authority sites'.

However, the link exchange process has been devalued by search engines, who now give much less credit for 'two way links', compared to 'one way links'. Therefore, some commentators claim reciprocal linking is a wasteful exercise. However, consider the increase in click through rates from two way links pointing into your website. Many webmasters fail to realise the value of ‘nofollow links’ from high volume authority based sites. Don't forget that click through rates from contextually related sites is a ranking factor.

Beware of the pitfalls though... You should be highly selective about the quality and type of link partner you agree to exchange with. Avoid linkbacks with a NOINDEX, and NOFOLLOW header, or a webpage that has not yet been 'cached'.  Likewise, some websites use JavaScript redirects or rel=nofollow on your linkback. Most importantly, avoid linkbacks form websites that has a different topic or theme from tat of your own website. Reciprocal linking to 'bad neighbourhoods' has the opposite effect and may get your site penalised or even banned! A bad neighbourhood are websites that contain adult content, medical, gambling, link farms or a banned site. Lastly, if your website acquires 1,000 new links in a day, it is obvious that manipulation is at work and those links were not deserving natural links!

You must have a long term linking strategy backed up with patience. Acquiring links naturally is a very long term process. So, as your website ages more and more webmasters will want to link back to your website - especially is you keep adding more and more great content!. You can be proactive and take practical steps to entice or 'bait' new inbound links to speed the process along. With this in mind, the following methods will directly or indirectly boost your link popularity and link reputation:-

1. To entice other webmasters to link to your website, it has to provide a large number of interesting and compelling pages. The sheer volume of quality webpages about your topic is vital. If your site only has a couple of webpages, webmasters won't be very keen to link to you. Content is king. Provide an easy way for webmasters to syndicate or bookmark your content. A simple ‘link to this page’ code also speeds the link back process along (see our code at the bottom of this page). So creating content is the most long term factor is naturally acquiring great links.

2. Create a content based and useful resources directory. Somewhere on your site you will need a directory of hand picked and external links to high quality related sites. You could include an 'add url submission form', to allow other webmasters to easily submit their request to be included within your directory. Lots of webmasters type in 'add url xyz' or submit url abc', to find sites that have a set of useful resources pages. Beware that you should never exchange links with websites that do not have similar content as your own website.

3. Submit your website to some quality human edited directories. This provides relevant one way inbound links back to your site. Beware that there are thousands of so called 'directories'. However, most have little value to add to your websites link reputation. Instead, target just a couple of dozen high quality directories. Most of the good ones will charge you for an annual listing. Check to see if they also post related articles and blog posts.

4. Write some unique articles for other webmasters. This may seem a little strange thing to do - building up someone else's website. Yet, writing a unique article (which of course contains a one-way 'inline linkback' to your website), is a win-win for you and your content partner.

5. Offer free images or videos to other webmasters seeking great content, (in exchange for a 'powered by' type linkback).

6. Syndicate links to your content via XML or RSS feeds. By writing really interesting, unique, informative news articles, (and offering them as free xml content feeds to other sites), you can obtain one way inbound links.

To implement and manage a link campaign you must be able to store a lot of information in a database or spreadsheet. Most reputable link management software packages will allow you to automate and streamline the link management processes. The software should allow you to exchange links easily. Therefore, it should help you to collect and prioritise prospect link partner information. You may need hundreds or even thousands of prospects. By using its software spider, you can gather data about prospects on mass (such as metadata, email contact information, WHOIS data, pagerank, Alexa rating, the ratio of inbound and outbound links, and much more besides).

To prospect, it helps to be able to email customised email requests to potential link partners and store an email audit history or who has got what email. The software should also allow you to FTP upload your own customised links pages. Similarly, it should allow you to check that your linkback code still exists, and have not been removed by other webmasters. Lastly, if you are managing multiple link campaigns simultaneously, link management software comes into its own. It is good practice to regularly amend your link back to vary the link back url location, anchor text and description to your site. Therefore, you may need multiple link campaigns to run at the same time. Without a software package, it rapidly becomes impossible to log an audit of hundreds or thousands of emails sent, links added and make notes on link partners.

The way in which you link your web pages together is almost as important as 'off-page' or external inbound links. By linking your pages together in the most efficient manner, pages with broadly similar content can help each other. This principle becomes more important, the greater number of web pages you have hosted on your site. We recommend:-

1. Apply a hierarchical tree structure if you have groups of content and lots of pages. This helps users logically navigate though your breadcrumb and menus.

2. Apply normal text links to interconnect your most important pages with one another.

3. Use absolute urls (not relative paths), so that directory scrapers will include your full url on their website.

4. On your 'important pages' reduce the number of outbound links to 'minor pages'. This reduces the ratio between outbound and inbound links. The term 'outbound links' can also be applied to other internal pages within your website.

5. The fewer the number of clicks between your home page and your important pages, the greater those important pages will benefit from the higher ranking of your home page. 

6. Try and link together internal pages on your site that share similar content (particularly in the metatitle).

7. Use a NOARCHIVE, NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW for pages with little or similar content.

We hope this short guide has given you a few ideas about the importance of webmaster link acquisition tactics and link management concepts. Good luck with your website!