Link building is an extremely important part of search engine optimization and is a critical part of developing an online presence. Unfortunately, it can be a long process and if not done correctly, can result in serious damage to your brand. The good news is that quality link building pays off by helping increase traffic to your site and improve your search engine ranking. Our link building experts collaborated on a list of dos and don’ts to help you get started:

 

DOs

  • Develop a well-optimized, professional, attractive website. Keep it up-to-date. This will encourage others to link to your site.
  • Know your target audience – conduct keyword research and target keywords relevant to your site. Make sure these keywords are the anchor text for the link.
  • Create great content (video, audio, text) for your site and make it easy to share around the Web. People will not link back to your site if it’s not easy for them to share it.
  • Seek out and become engaged with popular and influential blogs related to your business.
  • Participate in relevant online forums – add value with your posts, don’t just try to sell something.
  • Use social networks to connect to relevant industry leaders. Develop a mutually beneficial link-building relationship with them.
  • Create and publish articles on established article sites. Make sure they link back to your site.
  • Create online news releases to spread the word about newsworthy events. Distribute through reputable PR organizations.
  • Continue to work at building quality links around the Web. Monitor who is linking to your site and remove any “bad” links you come across.
  • Use a good internal site-linking structure. Make sure content links back to other pages on your site using keyword focused anchor text.
  • Build links to specific pages of your site that you want to showcase, not just the homepage.
  • Build links steadily and naturally; it’s a process, but slow and steady wins the race every time!

DON’Ts

  • Buy links – search engines are catching up with this quickly.
  • Use services that automate link building. There are many products available that claim to build thousands of links automatically. This type of link building is considered spam and can get your site penalized and blocked from the search engines.
  • Spam sites with generic comments just to get links – it’s unprofessional, annoying and can get you in trouble with the search engines.
  • Exchange links with low quality, unrelated websites. Reciprocal links should be handled carefully, and only with sites relevant to your business or industry.
  • Discount or avoid “no follow” links if the site is relevant – no follow links are part of natural link building.
  • Use hidden links on your site. Search engines are catching on quickly and will likely start to penalize sites that are doing this.
  • Stop building quality backlinks – keep at it!

Still have questions? Feel free to ask the Web marketing expert! We are here to assist you with any of your link building needs.