5 SEO Link Building Tips

I run my own writing company ‘Ink Elves’ but I have always been more interested in the writing than actually promoting it SEO (Search Engine Optimization) wise. The company has only been up and running for about six months and to be honest the only customers I get are people who have found us via forums, or through writing sites such as Elance and Freelancer. I have found that most people who use our company once will go on to use us again but in terms of search engine traffic, there is very little if any most days.

So today, on a rare day off I have found myself doing work (surprisingly haha). I have been reading a newbie guide to SEO link building and would like to share with you some of the tips on how to rank high in Google that I have discovered. I am planning on implementing these and seeing how these work, so as yet this is an unproven list but one nonetheless that I think is definitely worth the time.

What is Link Building?

Link building is seen as one of the most tedious tasks in the SEO world, but it is also one of the most important if you want to gain backlinks. Backlinks encourage people to visit your page and thus increase your popularity in Google and other notable search engines. The higher your page rank, the more people that will see your site. However with Google constantly changing its rules it is becoming more important than ever to make sure that you do everything in a user friendly way – the bots are getting clever and they are not impressed with Black Hat SEO techniques any more.

1. Avoid No Follow Links

There are no follow links and do follow links. No follow links were introduced to remove some of the spam that started cropping up everywhere and are not accredited as backlinks. Therefore they are pretty much pointless in your SEO efforts. Do follow links are what you need to make, these are seen as valuable to the big G and will increase your search engine ranking over time.

2. Make Relevant Links

Google is getting smarter. Getting links from sites that are similar to yours is good from an SEO standpoint. These are ranked much higher in Google than if you have links on sites with a completely random subject. You also have more chance of people visiting your site that are interested in what you have to say if they find you on a similar website.

3. Permanent Links

Where possible you should focus your SEO link building efforts on places where the link will be permanent. There is nothing worse than paying a company on a monthly basis to place links if you will lose all of these links once you cancel your contract. Losing links will cause your website’s position in a search engine to drop drastically thus losing you traffic.

4. Links from High Page Ranked Sites

Links to your site from websites who are highly ranked in Google are much better for you than hundreds of links from low page ranked sites. These sites carry a high value in Google and this is why they can charge a great deal to include your link on their site. If however you target the right sites, the return traffic can be significant.

5. Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that is made into a hyperlink to link to your website. Google assigns a high value to links containing anchor text so including your keywords in anchor text is a surefire way to improve your SEO standings.

This is still all pretty new to me at the moment but I hope this article has helped you as much as it has me in beginning to learn SEO. If you have a website and are just starting out, it is very important to increase your search engine ranking if you want a continuous stream of relevant traffic to your site. I would however definitely recommend writing FOR YOUR READERS and not writing for the search engines as many people seem to do. Yes search engine optimization is important but your readers are even more important and are what will make your website a success.