Obtaining Links from Highly Respected Pages

The key to effective link building depends on you being able to identify high ranking sites that might host a link to your site, whether they are business directories or other websites. Factors such as Google Page Rank will play a smaller role than in previous years, but still give a good indication as to Google’s opinion of the site. A small handful of good links from some very highly ranked and popular sites will always be more effective than hundreds of links from unpopular ones with no page rank.

Making the Most of Social Media

As social media plays a more central role to SEO, all those essential inbound links from your Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit and Stumble Upon accounts will start to carry more and more clout. Google often uses your article’s success with the native users of social sites when deciding how to rank it for the broader masses.  Clearly and article with 157 Diggs is going to have wider appeal and is likely to be more popular than one with 3. Google pays keen attention to these, making it important for you to get involved in social media in 2010.

Keeping Your Links Context Relevant

An often overlooked factor in any link building campaign is the relevance of your site to the linking one. Links that offer further information about a topic will not only conduct better traffic, but will have a greater impact on your SEO.  Keep your links within the same language as your site, and find reasons why people will benefit from your link.  For every product and service, there is usually a fan base, or enthusiast group waiting to be tapped in to. Are there any popular forums or discussion boards relevant to your products or services? Perhaps you might place an add in an online magazine for your industry? Sometimes the way to do this, is to post a comment and get involved.  Many free sites and comment systems allow you to include a signature, or a website URL in a profile or comment. ( Be sure to check the site terms and conditions, as different webmasters will place different rules around promoting sites! )

Maximising Your Naturally Generated Links from Good Content

A website with useful and informative content will naturally pick up inbound links that other users add. It is easy to convince yourself that this is down to others, and cannot easily be influenced from your site itself. But there are some simple rules that will help you maximise this area. All you really need to do is consider what you can offer people, which they cannot easily find elsewhere. As an expert in your industry, this might be anything from inside product information, industry news or practical tips about a product or service. If you can think of at least one type of person who would benefit from this knowledge, then write it! More content is always a good thing.

Be Aware of Creative or Hidden Link Building Opportunities

Often there are neat sites which you can obtain links from easily. Does your domain have an entry at www.aboutus.org? Have you a review on www.reviewcentre.com? There are also domain information and company information sites that are readily indexed by Google, and by taking five minutes to create an entry for your company or website, you will be generating some more informative, permanent back links that will improve the profile of your website.

In a nut shell, link building is almost a science in itself. You cannot go far wrong, provided you don’t add any links from spam websites, or websites of a different language.  By keeping mindful of where you might add links to your site – and never losing sight of the people who would benefit from this, you will maximising the effectiveness of each and every link added and contribute to the structure of the web itself.