Simple Steps on How to Build Links in SEO

What is Search Engine?

} A Search Engine is a program that helps users finds information on the Internet.

These are the critical operations that allow them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information:

} Crawling the Web - SEs run automated programs, called “bots” or “spiders” or “crawlers” that use the hyperlink structure of the Web to “crawl” the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web.

} Indexing Documents - Once a page has been crawled, its contents can be “indexed” – stored in a giant database of documents that make up a search engine’s “index”. This index needs to be tightly managed, so that requests which must be searched and billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second.

} Processing Queries - When a request for information comes into the SE, the engine retrieves from its index all the documents that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user.

} Ranking Results - Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine’s algorithm runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the result pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization or SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving the internal and external aspects of the website in order to increase the traffic it receives from search engines.

SEO Process is divided in 3 parts, it includes on-page optimization, off-page optimization and other technical process to make websites search engine friendly.

Step 1: On-page Optimization

1. Website Analysis

· Analyzing the website in terms of popularity, competitiveness, age and authority. Data that we measure in analyzing a website includes; number of backlinks, page rank, domain age, keyword density and content.

2. Keyword Research and Strategy

· Keyword Research is used to find the best phrase that will represent a website to the Search Engine. Keyword research depends on the target market, global or local. It is used to find what the visitor is looking for or searching for.

3. Baseline Keyword Ranking Report

· Getting the rankings of the researched keywords.

4. Keyword Mapping (Title Tags & Meta Descriptions)

· Keyword mapping is used in the websites content including Title, Description and Header Tags

5. Internal and external link analysis

· Analyzing the link structure of the website. Includes Sitemap creation and web page internal linking.

6. URL-Friendly Site

· Rewriting the Site’s URL using keyword rich URLs with an organized categorization

7. Content

· Content Updates (Blogs, Articles)

Step2: Off-page Optimization

1. Directory Submissions

· Submitting the site to different Web Directory sites

2. Press Releases

· Writing and Submitting Press-releases

3. Article writing and submissions to article directories

4. Blog and forum posts

· Creating Blogs in Blogger, Wordpress and participating to forums to get links

5. Social Bookmarking

· Submitting the website to the Social Bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, etc.

6. Link Wheel Creation

· Posting articles to different Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, Hub Pages and Weebly.

Step3: Technical

1. Google Analytics Setup

· Installing Google Analytics tracking code to the site. Used to track visitors data that includes demographics and source.

2. Google Webmaster Tools , Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Tools Setup

· Tools used for faster indexing and sitemap submission in the search Engines

3. Google Places Setup

· Used to target local search and for Google Map visibility

4. Competitor Analysis

· Analyzing the competitors backlinks, linking structure and on page strategies

5. Monthly Activity Report

· Creating monthly report that includes, Search Engine Results Page Keyword Ranking & Website Traffic Report

On-Page Optimization

} On-page optimization involves modifying keyword frequency in the URL, Title, Headings, Hypertext Links and Body text.

} On-Page factors are related directly to the content and structure of the website. This normally consists of pages written in the HyperText Markup Language but also applies to other document formats that are indexed by search engines, for example Microsoft Word or PDF formats.

On-Page Optimization Tips

} URL Naming:
If your domain name as possible, try to prime your targeted keywords, if still does not include your keywords in the url.

} Title Tag:
Title tag, the first words that you place your keywords Place and after using the word can attract visitors

} Meta Description:
Many search engines use the description tag at any time, but it is best to set it properly just in case. Put your keywords in the beginning of the first meta description, meta description and your website attract visitors do yo tour.

} Meta Keywords:
Yes many search is now not counted meta keywords, but use less engine search engine keyword tags, meta keywords using the search engine is still worth something to have your site rank

} Use Alt Text for Image Optimization:
Are unable to see images for Crawlers. Thus, appropriate displays using Alt tag your content with targeted keywords to optimize the images,

} Static URL:
Remember that all of your important pages should be short and static URLs.

} Use Headings:
H1, h2, and use the h3 title tag to define their key subject categories, and putting your keywords in style at least once a title.

} Valid HTML:
Use the W3C HTML validator on your page’s HTML is valid. A web page for more HTML errors will create not rank well in SERPS.

} Robot. Txt:
Your website for search engines with robots.txt file you can restrict access. Check on your website with robot.txt is apposite crawler information is required.

} Sitemap XML:
Create your XML Sitemap XML Sitemap using search engines crawl your pages.

} Keep Your Body Text To Read
Use your keywords in the text body, but keep your body text readable. Not in my drywall text keywords you drywall drywall stuff by humans until the drywall dry wall is unclear.

} Internal Link
Internal link between the construction related posts

Off-Page Optimization

} Also known as “Link Building”

} Link Building is the process of creating inbound links to one’s own website. This can be done by one-way links, reciprocal links, being listed in e-zines, newsletters, directories, search engines, etc. Link building is one of the best ways to make your site popular.

Link Building

Link Building is the process of creating inbound links to one’s own website. This can be done by one-way links, reciprocal links, being listed in e-zines, newsletters, directories, search engines, etc. Link building is one of the best ways to make your site popular.

Benefits of Link Building

} Improves natural search engine rankings (also called organic search engine rankings)

} One of the best SEO techniques for flash websites

} Results in a high ROI in the long run

} Generates brand awareness and recognition

} Cheap source of direct traffic

Link Building Methods

1. Link Begging / Solicitation / Request

2. Dealers, Suppliers, Distributors, Partners

3. Organizations, Memberships, Donations

4. Submissions

· Directories

· Articles

· Press Releases

5. Blogs

· Own Blog Postings

· Guest Blog Postings

· Blog Commenting

· Sponsored Reviews / Paid Blog Post

6. Banner Ads

7. Forum

· Own Forum

· Forum Posting

· Forum Signatures

8. Social Media

· Social Networking

· Social Bookmarking

Link Building Schemes

A site alone cannot achieve the desired marketing success without using certain website promotion techniques. Link building is an effective way of promoting and publicizing a website in the World Wide Web. There are different types of link building techniques and strategies which could help in getting higher rank in the search engine rankings. Proper selection and their usage help in extended web traffic and higher ranking, thus building brand recognition and greater profit.

1) One-way link building

Here one site gets a link on another website due to the quality and usability purpose and not for the business purpose. The website whose link is posted need not provide exchange link of the site on which it is posted.

Example: Directory Submissions, Article Submissions

2) Reciprocal link building (Link Partnership)

Another widely used strategy of link building is 'reciprocal link building'. Here there is link exchange between two websites on one to one basis. But one has to be careful in choosing the reciprocal partners, as fraud webmasters can take undue advantage of it. It is advisable to look out for quality partners and review their requests for links exchange before finalizing.

Sample Search Query you can use in Google to find possible link partner: site: .com “link partners”

3) Triangular OR three way link exchange

Here there is one-way link exchange between three websites. For example- site X gives link to site Y, site Y to site Z and site Z to site X. Thus all three sites have one-way links.

3) Link Wheels

Essentially, a link wheel leverages the power of highly ranked Web 2.0 sites to build targeted backlinks back to your sites.

Sample LinkWheel Image:

Why do these link wheels work?

· Increases Link Quantity

· Increase Link Diversity

o Varied IP Address

o Varied domains

o Varied website types

o Trying to appear natural

· Many social media sites have inherent trust/authority/pagerank, domain age and other good quality link factors.

· Can be created with less or no approval at all from other people

Other Google Command to Search for Link Opportunities:

site: Google Command for Link Building

1. site: .com “submit”

2. site: .net “submit”

3. site: .org “submit”

4. site: .edu “submit” (or add url, add website, submit site, suggest a site)

Creating your link building strategy

Before building any links to a website it is important to ask yourself a few questions like:

· What kind of links do you need?

· Do you need nofollow and branded links?

· Do you have a wide enough range of anchor text and landing pages?

Sadly every strategy is different and people can’t answer these questions for you but hopefully you can use the following information to help answer the questions.

Link Placement
In recent times Google has started placing value in link placement, in-content links passing the most value and footer links passing the least, although a good link profile should make good use of every link type as going out and sourcing only in-content links would be a very big sign of an unnatural link profile.

Nofollow & Dofollow
A lot of people go out and source dofollow links, but in doing this they do more harm to their link profile. Every website should have a good balance of nofollow links - there have been cases where sites with a very low number of nofollow links have not ranked as highly as others who keep a good balance.

Branded Links
I believe Domain Authority and Domain Trust make up a fairly large chunk of the ranking algorithm. Even though there are loads of factors in measuring these attributes, one good sign of both is having a good number of brand based anchor text pointing to your website. Some people make the mistake of only building branded terms to the homepage, when in fact there is more value in building links using these terms to landing pages throughout your website.

Anchor Text & Landing Page Distribution
When working on a link building campaign, it is important to work on a wide range of landing pages, using a variety of anchor text for each. Working on a small keyword / landing page set can upset the balance of a website and can have a very negative impact long term.

Content Relevancy
Since the Google May Day update this year, relevancy seems to play a larger role in the ranking factors. Even though the days of keyword stuffing are over, there is still a need to reference your keywords within your content, header tags, URI structure and title tags. Content may not be king but it is one of the keys to a successful link building campaign.

Sourcing Links
Once you have your link building strategy done and dusted the next step is to find suitable websites to source links from. There are many techniques that can be used for this job, some of which rely on tools and others that use manual search queries.

Manual Search Queries
It is said that it’s not the links your competitors have that will give you the edge but the links the competitors don’t have. To find these you will need to find link opportunities using manual search queries - the best way to do this is by using advanced search operators.

Advanced search operators are not as complicated as they sound but if used correctly they can provide a very nice set of search results. An introduction to advanced search operators can be found here and a short introduction can also be found on my personal blog under the post finding the links that matter.

One search string I would recommend when looking for suitable blogs for most niches is:

[search term] -site:Wikipedia.org -site:blogspot.com -site:telegraph.co.uk -site:wordpress.com -site:about.com -site:nationalgeographic.com -site:guardian.co.uk -"directory" -"add link" -"advertising"

Depending on your niche other domains can also be stripped from the results.

Directory Submissions
Directory submission is the most boring and repetitive job, but sadly it is an important task in any link building campaign. These links make up the numbers when it comes to branded links. Submit to the right directories and they will improve your overall domain authority.

Blog and Forum Commenting
Blog and forum commenting for links is seen as spam due to many people taking advantage of unprotected blogs and forums. If blog and forum commenting is part of your outlined strategy then some effort should be put into them.

The best way to act on this kind of link building is by using Google’s blog search to find the most recent articles published within your niche then make a genuine comment based on the content of the article, using the Name field for branded anchor text. This type of link building is best for increasing the number of nofollow links to your website.

Guest Blogging Communities
Guest blogging is a great place to find blogs within your niche, but instead of offering to do a guest post why not offer to write a few pages (I say pages as they are linked to via the top navigation) of content for them? After all these people want content and being able to source multiple pages not only saves time but can also lead to Google seeing the links as trustworthy, just remember to link out to authority sites within your niche as well.

Widgets & Theme Designs
There has been a lot of talk about creating widgets to increase the number of natural user generated links, which does work, but the widget you create does have to be unique and worth having so there isn’t a gap for this in every niche.

Another way to increase the number of user generated links is by creating a WordPress theme, a lot of people have said there is low value in this but if the theme is good enough it can generate 40k+ links (from previous experience). If you wish to go down this route the best way to market it is via your monthly newsletters, just put in a small section about it and wait for results, but remember to also submit it to theme hubs around the web for additional exposure.

Link to Us Pages
Link to us pages are not only great for increasing the number of user generated links but great for masking other link building activities. I would suggest having a link to us page displaying all the branded terms used within your campaign and have different types of links for each (Banner Ad, Contextual Ad, Text Link).

Competitions
If you client is running competitions contact bloggers in your niche and ask politely if they would blog about it. Although getting targeted anchor text through this tactic is harder it can help build the number of generic keywords linking to your domain.

Contacting Webmasters
Making contact with webmasters is one of the most difficult jobs - just about every email sent out needs to be personalised and in some cases contact is needed via social media before an email has been sent.

When sending an email to a webmaster, remember they are a real person just like you, so ask yourself a few simple questions before drafting:

· If you were the webmaster what would persuade you to link out?

· Would you rather a relationship was formed before receiving a link request?

· Should the email be from an SEO’s point of view or would it be better keeping it simple and to the point?

Tracking Progress
Tracking the progress of your link building campaign is something that needs to be done. This can be done in a variety of ways but the best solutions I have found is using Raven Tools for overall tracking of performance and using an Excel document to keep a list of links built containing metrics such as Page Rank, mozRank and Domain Authority.

Having a list of metrics for each link enables you to display a variety of information relating to your link building campaign which helps when generating reports for your clients.

Simple Steps on How to Build a Link

Directory Submissions:

} Benefits of Directory Submission:

◦ - Higher Position In the Search Engine Results

◦ - Web Site Indexed

◦ -Click through Traffic

1. Search for Web Directory Sites on Google (Sample Site: http://www.polypat.org)

2. Click/Select a site:

Once you find a list of directory site, browse them and click.

3. Click “Submit Site”

4. Input your Website Details (title, url, description, etc.)

Select the regular listing, input all the details needed and select the proper category for your business.

5. Continue and Submit

Sample List of Web Directory Sites: http://www.submitedge.com/directory_list.html

Social Bookmarking:

} Benefits of Social Bookmarking Submission:

◦ You'll get quality backlinks once you will finish your job.
If you have lot of bookmarks, it will increase your search engine rankings.

◦ Instant exposure to lots of users so it's a nice prospect to have high amount of traffic.
It allows subdomains as well, so we can help you to promote your inner pages as well.
Social Bookmarking submission can help you to get good Keyword ranking as well. As you can tag your website with your targeted keyword and SE's add this data.
As well as websites, you can submit links to your articles.

Simple Step by step process:

1. Search for Social Bookmarking site on Google.

2. Signup to Social Bookmarking Websites (Sample site: http://buddymarks.com)

3. Confirm the sign-up to your email, Go to the site and Log-in

4. Click “Add Bookmark”

5. Input your Website Details (title, url, description, tags, etc.)

6. Continue and Submit

Sample List of Social Bookmarking Sites: http://www.social-bookmarking-sites-list.com/

Social Networking:

} Benefits of Social Networking:

◦ Increase the traffic to the site which helps a great deal in improving the ranking of the site in the search engine result pages.

◦ Brand building: For a new business, this provides an opportunity to develop brand awareness among the people and to promote the same.

◦ Reputation management: The social media can also be a medium to put out the defense against the adverse publicity. It can be the medium to present the honest and truthful account and your own point of view, with the objective of countering the negative publicity. So, this medium can be used for managing your reputation online.

Simple Step by step process:

1. Signup to Social Networking Websites (Sample site: http://hubpages.com/)

2. Confirm the sign-up to your email, Go to the site and Log-in

3. Click “Start a New Hub or Post Article”

4. Input your Website Details (title, url, description, tags, etc.)

5. Continue and Submit

Sample List of Social Networking Site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Article Submissions:

Benefits of Article Submissions:

} Great sources of getting one way link.

} Generate interest in the content of your website so as to attract new, unique visitors.

} Best alternative to link exchange and link exchange networks.

} Save time in getting back-links to your website instead of directory submission and link exchanging.

} Some article submission and PR web sites allow people to subscribe to specific categories related to their web site as RSS feeds.

Simple Step by step process:

1. Create an Article with Keyword Rich Content

2. Signup to Article Directory Websites (Sample site: http://ezinearticles.com)

3. Confirm the sign-up to your email, Go to the site and Log-in

4. Click “Submit Articles”

5. Input your Article and other Website Details (title, url, description, tags, etc.)

6. Put your “Website’s URL” at the “Author Bio” Text Field.

7. Continue and Post Article

Sample List of Article Directory Sites: http://www.styopkin.com/article_submission_sites.html

Press-release Submissions:

Benefits of Press-release Submissions:

} Press release gives you visibility

} Press release helps to build your brand

} Press release gives you authority and credibility

Simple Step by step process:

1. Create an Press-release or news with Keyword Rich Content

2. Signup to Press-release Directory Websites (Sample site: http://www.prlog.org/)

3. Confirm the sign-up to your email, Go to the site and Log-in

4. Click “Submit Press-Release”

5. Input your Press-Release Article and other Website Details (title, url, description, tags, etc.)

6. Put your “Website’s URL” at the Content or Create a Hyperlink

7. Continue and Submit Press-release

Sample List of Press-release Sites: http://www.avangate.com/articles/press-release-distribution_69.htm

Forum Ad Posting:

Simple Step by step process:

1. Signup to Forum Advertising Websites (Sample site: http://adsfreeforum.com/)

2. Confirm the sign-up to your email, Go to the site and Log-in

3. Click “PRODUCTS & SERVICES” Thread.

4. Click “New Topic”

5. Post your Websites Product, Services, Description.

6. Put your “Website’s URL” at the Content or Create a Hyperlink

7. Adding Images, Pictures or Video is recommended

8. Continue and Post the Topic

Sample List of Forum Ad Sites: http://newbizshop.com/advertising-forumsdirectories/

Blog Posting:

Simple Step by step process:

1. Signup to Blog Sites(Sample site: http://blogger.com/)

2. Confirm the sign-up to your email, Go to the site and Log-in

3. Create “New Post”

4. Post your Article.

5. Put your “Website’s URL” at the Content or Create a Hyperlink

6. Continue and Publish Post

Sample List of Blog Sites: http://mashable.com/2007/08/06/free-blog-hosts/

Blog Commenting

Benefits of Blog Commenting

} Commenting on popular blogs can bring in tons of visitors. Famous blogs like ProBlogger's and John Chow's blogs enjoy high readership. By placing a sensible remark there, their visitors will come streaming to your site.

} Posting your remarks do qualify you to post your website link there. Some posts have high PageRank. This means that you can get a free high PR backlink. It can cost hundreds of dollars for a PR 7 link.

} Build Your Credibility

} Improve Your Website's Ranking

Simple Step by step process:

1. Search Blog Post on Google. You can use the search query ("post comment" iPhone) or you can install Stumbleupon Toolbaro on your browser and Stumble sites with blog comment field.

2. Determine if the site or Page is do follow or no-follow. (you can see that by viewing the source code of the site: “press crt + u” then find the nofollow attribute by pressing “crt+ f” then type the “nofollow” if the site returns no result, then the site is a do follow.)

3. Post Comment only to Do follow Sites.

Forum Signature

1. Search for forums site related to your Website. You can use the "Powered by SMF" + keyword or

"Powered by vBulletin" + keyword search query on Google to find forum sites

2. Determine if the site or Page is do follow or no-follow.

3. Create a profile and put a Signature by placing your Target keyword and your websites url.

4. Save your profile and start posting or replying to forum posts and thread.

Benefits of Forum Signature

} When your signature anchor text contains the targeted keyword for the linked page, it has positive impact on search rankings.

} When the other forum visitors see your signature slogan, they may become interested and follow the signature link.

Other Search Query:

} "Powered by SMF" + keyword

} "Powered by vBulletin" + keyword

} .com/forums+ keyword + Powered by vBulletin

} .net/forums+ keyword + Powered by vBulletin

Although link building is a tough task in itself if you plan your strategy properly, build the correct links and track the progress of your strategy the job will become easier over time and you will begin to see what works and what doesn’t for your site.