Link building strategy

Why are incoming links important?

Links are the bread and butter of the internet. Users find your site by following links from related sites. Search engines find your site in the same way. The more incoming links you have, the more important your site is considered by the search engines. The more important the pages that link to you are, the more important the page on your site is considered to be.

It is a central part of any effective search engine optimization strategy to concentrate on building up external links coming into the site. Usually these would link to the homepage but it can also be helpful to have links coming directly in to subpages, for example if you have a useful article somewhere on the site. The page that receives the link gets the bulk of the benefit, but it can then 'share' this benefit around by linking to other pages within the site. This is the basis of Google's PageRank system of rating webpages for importance.

How do you get incoming links?

Incoming links are most difficult to get when the site is new and not many people know about it. At this stage, good sources of links are websites owned by other people you know, directories of related content and sites that may write an article on your topic. Until you have your first link, Google and the other search engines will not find you.

You can contact webmasters of other sites to raise the profile of your site. If your site contains valuable and unique content then you will find people who will want to link to you.

Sources of incoming links

Directories are a good place to start for incoming links. The biggest directory is called Dmoz, otherwise known as the Open Directory Project. It contains millions of sites and sites are listed for free by volunteer editors around the world. They have clear guidelines which are available on their site, detailing how you submit a site and how to describe it. Getting your site included may take some time, as it depends on a human editor reviewing it. Another major directory is the Yahoo Directory, which is primarily a pay-for-inclusion directory.

If you think laterally, you will probably come up with many sites that are related to yours and may be happy to link to you. Search in Google for the phrases that you think your users might use and look at which sites come up. Early on, smaller sites are more likely to link to you than larger sites but it never hurts to try the larger sites, so long as you have made sure that your site is finished and looks professional.

Another useful way of finding sites to link to you is to look at which sites have linked to your competitors. You can see the larger sites that have linked to your competitors by typing "link:" and the web address of your competitor into Google, for example "link:www.yourcompetitorsurl.com". An example of this in use is here.

Further link development

As you increase the number of incoming links, the PageRank of your pages will increase. As this happens, other people will want to get you to link to them. The link into their site is more valuable if your page has a higher PageRank. Often sites exchange "reciprocal" links, although this practice is becoming more frowned upon by the search engines (see below).

As more people link to you, your site will become more prominent in the search engines and other people will find your site and request links. Although many sites choose to organise links on specific links pages, these days it is considered better practice to include appropriate links throughout the content of your site, as this approach is more targeted at improving the experience of your site's users.

Going forward, don't forget all the other sources of incoming links - directories, articles, news, personal pages etc. Also, don't be afraid of linking to and receiving links from sites that appear small - their PageRank may well increase as time passes and they get more incoming links to their site.

Issues associated with reciprocal linking

In recent years, search engines have started to take a dim view of extensive reciprocal linking, in particular where it is aimed at inflating PageRank rather than being of use to your site's users. Link exchange programmes should be avoided for example. On Google's webmaster guidelines, linked here, they give some guidance on this issue:

Examples of link schemes [to be avoided] can include:

Links intended to manipulate PageRank
Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank