How to build a Powerful Linking Strategy

In SEO, once you have properly completed your on-page optimization for your site, the next most important thing to do is to have a proper linking strategy.

Your on-page optimization will tell the search engines what your webpage is all about, but it's only your linking strategy that will give you that first page ranking you are seeking.

Clearly, there are many ways to do so, some ethical, some not.?  However, before I explain you those ways, I want to clarify with you why a powerful linking strategy is so important for your SEO.

There are 2 main objectives when building a link strategy:

• Bringing more targeted visitors to your site.

• Creating as many related inbound links as possible.

The first objective is fairly obvious. Whatever we do in SEO as for purpose to bring more targeted visitors to your site. Notice that I talk about targeted visitors, not just visitors.

SEO is about bringing high quality prospects to your site, in order to have them perform a specific action. Fail to do so and you are just wasting your time and efforts.

The second objective is what I'm going to elaborate on in this post. How do we bring all those targeted visitors to our site? By creating as many related inbound links as possible. An inbound link is a link from another site that points toward your site.

It's like a message telling people to come and visit your site.

Yet again, I talk about related inbound links, although a link is still a link as some people would say, a powerful inbound link is much more effective than a non related one. Just consider the following examples; which link do you think will bring the best traffic to my SEO help website:

• Link 1: Placed on the homepage of a forum for beginners on how to do SEO.

• Link 2: Placed on the link page number 56 of a pet grooming site for retired elderly.

Of course, Link 1 is much more worth our time and effort. Now, why some people still argue that a link is a link? Because it is possible that a retired elderly fan of pet grooming was browsing the link page number 56 of the site you happen to have a link within, and that same person happened to know someone who is seeking information about SEO help...

Although my example is a bit farfetched I give it to you, it is still possible and does happened sometimes. But let's be realistic for a second, isn't it obvious that we should focus our efforts getting links similar to the Link 1?

Another reason why inbound linking is so important is for the search engines. You can say that beside content quality, search engines rank sites by popularity. The logic is simple the more popular a site is, the better it (or its content) should be. So how do the search engines measure popularity on internet?

Yes! You got it, by the number of inbound links you have! Consider each inbound link as a vote for your site. Now, a highly related or relevant site link is worth even more points, and if that site is already a very popular one in your niche, you hit the jackpot!

Alternately, if the links comes from a totally unrelated niche, its point value will highly decrease too.

Google use the PR (Page Rank) system to define how popular a page is.

So, how do we build those inbound links? There are several strategies to do so:

• Long term strategies. These strategies are not immediately rewarding and will only carry their fruits on the long run, they includes article marketing and press release marketing. It usually takes time for your articles to spread and let listed over the internet, but once it's done, you have a wide spread forever lasting powerful linking strategy.

• Reciprocal strategies. These strategies are like trading, you exchange a service for another one similar, and they include link exchange, favorite exchange, comment exchange, and subscription exchange. More than SEO, these strategies can sometimes help you build relationship within your community too.

• Instant strategies. These strategies have the advantage to be instantly rewarding, though the links themselves may not be lasting, they include blog comments and forum posts. Another great thing about those strategies is that they may help you increase your popularity, expertise and notoriety among your peer community if your participation is one of quality.

? The best linking strategy you can implement is a combination of long-term, reciprocal and instant strategies. Of course you should avoid the paid and spam strategies at all cost! Buying links is just a waste of money, and search engines are fighting against those. No need to elaborate more on why spam should be avoided.

To your success!