by | Aug 20, 2014

Securing inbound links from external sources back to your website is crucial for search engine optimization (SEO). It is generally accepted that inbound links have more weight with search engines than the things that you do on your website (on-page optimization).

According to SEOmoz, “Links aren’t everything in SEO, but search professionals attribute a large portion of the engines’ algorithms to link-based factors…growing the link profile of a website is critical to gaining traction, attention and traffic from the engines…link building is among the top tasks required for search ranking and traffic success…”

Generating high quality links is, therefore, an activity that you must constantly engage in if you want to achieve long-term online success.

Establishing inbound links will develop your online authority, credibility, and trust with search engines.

Link BuildingHow Can I Get Inbound Links?

Securing links requires on-going execution of a number of activities, including:

  • Social media engagement
  • Listings in niche and local directories
  • Effective content distribution
  • Press releases
  • Networking/relationship building

Content plays a central role in link building. Valuable, relevant, and compelling content is what drives online conversations that result in links. Click here for the top 3 reasons you should commit to content marketing.

What Kinds of Inbound Links Are Best?

Not all links are created equal.

Credible, quality, inbound links pass their trust and authority to you. The more authoritative the linking source, the better. A high quality link is worth much more than many low quality links – quality is more important than quantity.

In fact, low quality links from ‘spammy’ websites will actually hurt your website’s rankings.

Normally, the harder a link is to secure, the greater its value. The relative value of a link can be determined using a tool such as SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer.

Link sources should be diverse because this demonstrates to search engines that a variety of influencers stand behind an organization or its content.

Links must be relevant because securing links from sources that have nothing to do with your business will have a negligible impact on search engines.

Warning: Bad Practices Will Be Penalized

As with on-page SEO, there are ‘black hat” and ‘white hat’ link building tactics.

Organizations must steer clear of black hat tactics such as:

  • Purchasing links from a link farm
  • Spammy comments on other websites with a link back to your own website
  • Exploitative guest posting (guest posting your blogs on websites meant only to be a forum for link building articles – Google is getting smarter and will know the difference between legitimate guest posting and low-quality guest posting)

Google places severe penalties on organizations that take shortcuts to link building.

The Bottom Line
If you build high quality links, they will come.
As the number of quality inbound links you secure increases over time, search engine rankings will improve, as will online visibility.
This leads directly to increased site traffic – and ultimately to more inbound leads. And that’s why investing in link building activities makes good business sense.

>> Core Online Marketing provides comprehensive online marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses. Contact us to discuss what you need, or attend our free online marketing seminar to learn how to leverage online marketing.

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Ben Molfetta
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