Viral link building strategies

Link building can be thought of as one of the most important factors in the website optimisation plan, although there are around a hundred or so factors that ultimately effect the ranging of the page being optimised, linking is very high on the importance scale. A single web page can and should only be optimised for two keyword phrases or search keywords more than that and it will lose the effectiveness and confuse the search engine bot or spider as it were (I am talking on site optimisation).

Having a solid link strategy is fundamental to a successful SEO campaign, we spend a considerable amount of time and effort designing linking strategies for our clients. A link can be thought of as a vote for your site, the more votes the better the ranking your site will ultimately receive.

Creating viral content that serves a purpose and is useful for your market is a fundamental starting block for attracting links.

Link building is part of the off site search optimisation strategy, with ethical link building we can optimise a page for a plethora of search phrases and keywords, although it does and should take some time. Let us look at the anatomy of the link.

<a href=”http://www.webrand.com.au” title=”Tactical Marketing”>Search Engine Optimisation</a>

In this example there are 3 parts to the link; the website address, the link title and the human readable linking word. We will leave key wording the domain and actual website page key wording for now and address that at a later stage.

First we have the actual address of the link, this can be as in the example just the domain name, or it could be a deep link, ‘a link which points to a particular page’. We then have the link title, using a link title is a good idea to broaden the scope or relevance of the link, I will explain more in a sec. Third we have the actual link text that we humans can read and the visiting search engine bots and spiders.

If we for instance just use our domain name as the linking text we are doing ourselves no favours, No1 you will rank for your domain name in most cases anyway and second in most cases not many people will be searching for your domain name. So what we are looking to do and this is of course after you have performed the all important keyword research, is use phrases targeted at your goods or services and secondary using phrases people are actually searching for.

Now back to the link title, by using a title tag we can also tell the visiting search engine we are relevant for another term in this case ‘tactical marketing’ so in essence we have created a two fold keyword phrase our main keyword phrase ‘Search Engine Optimisation‘ and our secondary phrase ‘Tactical Marketing‘

Now you understand why we must use descriptive words for our links on to the correct usage and why one way is important.

First the one way link, one way links are far more valuable the reciprocal links, this can be understood with an easy analogy. If you give me a beer and I give you a beer we are no better off, but if I just give you a beer then you are a lucky person.

Links in a nutshell are votes simple as that if we both vote for each other than it removes weight from the equation, but if I am just voting for you then I am saying you are doing a great job and here is my vote so as other people can see your great work.

Why SPAMMING is a waste of time

If you are running a blog; then you probably like me spend a bit of time clicking that bulk moderate comments to SPAM fun isn’t it. SPAMMING is apart from being a lowlife losers occupation, useless. No1 nearly all of us either mark the offending comment as SPAM or have a more advanced filters in place to stop it even getting that far (we will address advanced SPAM filtering in another post)

One good link

One good link from one website is worth hundreds of low quality links.

Some links are worth more than others, for example in the domain extension with .gov and .edu are worth more than .com or .com.au a good link from a .gov or .edu domain simply is worth allot and could be considered the holy grail of links. An old website is also worth much more than a new website, it is in debate how much extra a high PR site is worth over a old domain name, we find ourselves though that age beats page rank, but high page rank beats new site. All in all if you can obtain links from high PR sites with an old domain name you really are in the holy grail of link weight.

Blogs are like a good wine

If you can pick up some good links from new blogs these can be worth a great deal over time, just because it has little PR or age now, like a good Shiraz it will get better over time. Become involved in your market and engage your market, seek friendships with bloggers and web masters one link from a blog can turn into a valuable and profitable resource. Just remember nothing is achieved overnight, as with a good red it takes time to mature be patient and be honest to your market and you too could be the next heavy weight boxer in the link stakes.

How do I get links?

Quality content that serves a unique purpose, creating content that people will find so useful or interesting that it will naturally attract links.

Create buzz so people can find your content through more mediums, submit your worthwhile content to Digg, Facebook, business directories such as HotFrog.com.au. Although make sure it is worthwhile content, this practise will also provide a few needed links to that content to get it started. But remember it is quality links you are looking for which in turn are links that came from people who considered your content unique or insightful.

For a professional link building campaign, please visit our 'professional link building page'

Associated articles

1. Off site optimisation
2. On site optimisation
3. Keyword research
4. Link building