Los Angeles Web Design blog
Info on Search Engine Optimization, Web Design and Web 2.0
How to build links - an honest guide to organic link building
September 26th, 2007 by admin
Of course everyone wants links! Anyone who has common internet sense knows that link building is the true key to success on the internet and getting higher up on the search engines. The main goal for a basic website is to get a few solid links so that you can plant your internet roots and give your website a solid base from where search engine spiders can crawl to your website.
Start with basic link building
Before going crazy and scouring the internet for links start with the basic areas where any business should start.
- Internet Yellow Pages - Here you can get a link for free and you can get it rather quickly. You may already have a listing for your business that you don’t even know about.
- DMOZ Internet Directory - This directory is one of the largest directories and its run by a collaboration of some of the largest ISP’s. The only downfall is that it is edited by humans that aren’t paid thus getting your link up there can take forever…sometimes over 6 weeks!
- Google Maps / Yahoo Maps - Yup you can get a free link here too but it may not apply if you are running a business from home. This applies best for ‘Brick and Mortar’ businesses that have a geographical location.
Relevant Link Building
Probably the most important type of link building and sometimes rather difficult depending on what type of website you have. What this entails is finding relevant areas where you can get links that have the same information as your website or similar. This may be a directory related to construction for example where you can list your construction website. Another example is one business trading links with another business and they’re services are similar. Exchanging links can be beneficial for both businesses provided that neither business can have a loss of business to one another or a conflict of interest.
Watch out for SEO and Link Building scams!
This is important because the ramifications can be much worse than originally anticipated. Something that seemed innocent and a good idea can turn your seo efforts into a disaster! Many companies say they can guarantee 50, 100 or even 500 links and they may also claim that they are organic links. They may be right in a technical sense…but the underlying technology is what is potentially dangerous. Typically what goes on is the website or service runs hundreds of directories all over the internet and puts your link dynamically into these directories. The bad thing is that the search engines are constantly changing their alogarythms they use to ‘weed’ out these directories once they find them. If you get caught in the mix you could get black listed too. By nature this is a bad practice because these directories weren’t setup for humans in the first place so the traffic running through them are typically search engine spiders and random traffic so the traffic that does come through them is not true targeted traffic that you would typically get from a well placed link anyway. So these can be seen as poor long-term link building efforts because they can be here today and gone tomorrow just like that.
Happy Link Building!
-Jason Schiffer