SEO Blog

In the SEO business we often go on about the importance of building your inbound links. Not without good reason admittedly. This is where you’ll get your PageRank, your site strength and help your website get ranked. But what’s the point in linking to a half-cocked website?

It is a difficult one though. There’s always a temptation to get your site on Google’s radar and get those first links set up; nothing wrong with that at all. But before you embark on a full blown link building odyssey, you need to get your house in order.
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Unfortunately, building links for a site was never intended to be easy. Yes, you can sign up for directories, submit articles, press releases and hubs, but the glean any value from them takes time. There’s no avoiding that.

This isn’t entirely accidental. It is a product of links being ascribed a value, not only in SEO terms but financial ones too (although you could argue these two are permanently interlinked anyway). The pay off often comes by way of content, which invariably takes a fair amount of time to generate, regardless of the quality levels you employ.

If link building could be done in minutes, we’d all have sites with millions of links. This would slowly undermine the algorithms and force tighter scrutiny from search engines. Essentially, it’s probably best that those who are clever with their link building strategies are rewarded more than those who treat them as quick, disposable commodities.
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Whilst there is plenty that you can do to improve your site under your own steam, sometimes it’s just as good getting a bit of a free ride. Finding ways of getting new links and working out what keywords to target next can be a bit of a chore, particularly when you hit a creative brick wall. So why not let your competitors do some of the legwork?

We’re all in the same boat when it comes to search engine rankings. We all want a competitive advantage and will work hard to ensure that we get to the top. Unfortunately there will always come a time where you have to find new avenues to explore and you won’t be flush with ideas. By studying a competitor’s link profile you can gain ‘inspiration’. By reviewing more competitor’s, you can be all the more inspired.

Okay, so that might sound a little underhanded, and I guess it is, but everybody is doing it all the time - your site included. Even using something freely available like Yahoo Site Explorer will give you an idea of the strong links that a site is receiving, which will allow you to find directories, blogs and websites that might be able to throw a link your way too.
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It might not seem like the most obvious link building tactic, but other blogs and forums provide a great opportunity to really give your website a boost.

Most will offer you the opportunity to include a link back to your site within the author’s name or indeed within the comment itself; whilst many may be nofollowed, occasionally you’ll find a site with decent PageRank that will allow the full strength of a link to be passed on. Where this happens, make sure you pounce.

But what do you write in one of these forum posts or blog comments? Well, the best thing to do is simply respond honestly. Don’t write the turgid kind of ‘completely agree’ response that offers little value or imagination. Read the post, see what the forum members say and write something that will add to the conversation, not detract from it entirely.
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There’s a strange assumption that SEO is somehow a complicated, expensive process. The truth is that it is as complicated as you make it and you can spend what you want.

Don’t become sidetracked by the promise of exceptional wealth as a result of splurging your cash left right and centre. SEO is no more about splurging huge amounts of money as it is about filling page after page with nonsensical keywords.

Links play a huge part in building confidence with the search engines. A site without incoming links is no easier to find than it is to trusts; at least, that is the view of algorithms. So it goes without saying that you should invest a fair amount of time, although not money it should be noted, on building a pretty decent link profile.
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If you are using article marketing to promote your site, you will be all too aware of how much time it takes to write and submit your cherished content. Of course the most time consuming is the writing itself. First you have to research your subject, then you have to come up with a title then you actually have to produce the copy.

The whole process can take hours from start to finish. If time is precious and resources scarce, this might be time that you think could be better spent elsewhere. Well, there’s no need to abandon it just yet. Article marketing becomes a whole lot simpler when you work in batches.
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Links are the electricity that keeps the internet running. They transport visitors from site to site and help the search engines index new pages with greater swiftness. A link is also a good sign of authority. If a strong website is willing to pass some of their traffic on to you, the search engines will see this as a pretty good endorsement of your relevance and importance.

Therefore, and hopefully without appearing too simplistic, it is extremely important that you have as many good quality links coming into your site as possible. By good quality I mean anything from a relevant site or with a high PageRank (even though Google claim that PageRank isn’t a determining factor in rankings, it does suggest a certain authority and a decent link structure of their own). These will ultimately gain you the best possible result in the rankings and can help strengthen your site throughout.
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I’ve spoken at length about the virtues of link building throughout this blog. In terms of SEO few things are more important than a decent linking structure, both internally and externally.

It isn’t just the number of links you attract, nor is it all about the quality of those links, sometimes the page that they lead to is ultimately integral.

Don’t get me wrong, the abandonment of highly relevant links from websites with a high PageRank are hugely important; however, do all your links really need to go the Home page? It’s a trap that has lured in many websites in the past, but a lack of diversification when it comes to the destination of inbound links can be damaging.
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