The Business of Link Building

The concept of link building is one of the key concepts included in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaigns.  With the Internet being more entrenched in its status as the dominant media of our times, link building has become the primary means for achieving the holy grail: number one page ranking (PR).

    That exactly, is link building?  Link Building refers to the process by which your website gets "linked" or connected to other websites.  It is equivalent to putting a doorway through which people can get to your site.  The more links you have pointing to your site, the more easily people will be able to find you.  In internet parlance, this practice builds up traffic.

    When someone needs to find information on the internet, what they do is go to a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or AskJeeves.  They type in their search query and the search engine returns a list of relevant results according to the perimeters of that search. As you probably know very well, an internet search could turn up thousands of search results.  The average internet researcher would only follow results that appear within the first three pages.  This is where page ranking counts.

    Newer websites get low page ranking scores.  Link building to older, established websites will drive up your own site's PR ranking so that you get more traffic to your site, which in turn will drive up revenue. 

Link building can be achieved in several ways.

1.     Valuable links can be gained by submitting your website to search engine-friendly web directories.  This can be rather time consuming, but the links gained from this process can be worth the effort.

2.    Reciprocal links can be built by exchanging links with other websites on a similar topic.  If you see a website that is well-written and maintained, you can email the webmaster and request for a link exchange arrangement.

3.    Submit original articles to free article directories.  Generally, free article directories will accept well-written articles that have good content and a subject matter relevant to their directory topic.  Articles that you submit should contain embedded links to your website.

4.    Blog commenting is one effective way of link building.  You will need to locate online forums related to your website subject matter and post comments on these forums.  Include your website address in the comment signature.

5.    Certain social media websites such as Facebook or MySpace can also promote your website, by posting links and status updates incorporating links to your website.  You can also buy advertising space to these sites, since they do tend to have large consumer bases as users.