Link Building: To Link, or Not to Link, That is the Question
Lately, there have been a lot of heated discussions regarding
link building. Is it ethical to create a link building campaign?
Does Google or any other search engine penalize for "link farms"
(a bunch of non-related links created for the SOLE purpose of
increasing search engine ratings)? Is the "link building era"
over?
Link Farms Many webmasters claim that Google penalizes websites
for link farms. If this is so, why are a link farm sites that
have a page rank of 5 on their link farm page? Let me give you
an example, go to Google.com, type in any popular keyword(s) and
append the word "links" to it. For example, "ABCD Links." Notice
you’ll get tones of websites that are linking to unrelated
sites, but still have a great PR. I do not encourage link
farming in any way or form, but building valuable partnerships
is something I do encourage. If you’re a jewelry site and you’re
exchanging links with an antiques site, I think this is a great
thing. It’s very possible that someone searching for jewelry may
have an interest in antiques. I own a few sites and the hits I
receive from partially related sites are phenomenal. Most of my
websites are targeted towards webmasters so I receive hits from
all sorts of sites. Remember, many webmasters claim to know the
truth regarding search engine algorithms, but no one knows the
EXACT TRUTH except the programmers at the search engines.
Webmasters may have been penalized in the past for link farms
and doorway pages (pages created around certain keywords for the
sole purpose of redirecting surfers to the main page), but who’s
to say why some HAVEN’T been penalized.
Who Should I Create Link Partnerships With?
1. Create link
partnerships with sites related to your site.
2. Create link partnerships with sites that have an audience
that may be interested in your products
3. Exchange homepage links with websites that fit in your genre.
You’ll receive a link on a page with a good ranking and you’ll
get quality, targeted hits.
How Do You Find Link Partners? 1. Signup with an automated links
management provider that organizes your links and helps find
link partners. Automated tools are the best because they help
you save time. Uploading and downloading your pages for every
link exchange can be a huge pain and very time consuming.
Automated tools are NOT link farms because they give you
complete control of who you exchange links with. If a member
exchanges links with every website, he/she might be abusing the
tool. If a member uses the tool responsibly, it can be very
effective.
This is a great little exercise I would recommend to anyone.
a. Write down 20 search terms pertaining to your website
b. Go to http://www.google.com and type in a search term written in
step A
c. Contact as many websites as possible listed under that
search term and ask them to exchange inner page or homepage
links with you. If they're NOT interested, ask whether they
would be interested in selling advertising space. If your
website is fairly new, you may want to ask sites for advertising
prices. Free hits are the best hits but sometimes you might have
to go the extra lap and pay for service. I wouldn't recommend
spending over $100 / month for advertising UNLESS it's a high
traffic site with your site audience. The best deals are the
ones that offer $10-25 / month. There are sites out there that
will sell SUPER cheap advertising, and others that charge an arm
and a leg.
EVERYONE gets rejected sometime or another so keep your head up
and keep moving along! The internet is comprised of Billions of
websites. If you're rejected 500 times, you still have MANY
business opportunities left! This is a continuous job so set
aside time every week to do this. If you don’t have time for
this, then you don’t have time to make money.
Hire a link building firm (this can be quite expensive but if
you have money, its minimal work for you)
Pagerank is a great tool but don’t use it as your ONLY
measurement for success. I can’t explain everything about
pagerank but a good explanation is given at
http://www.google-watch.org/pagerank.html.
In conclusion, link building is not only for
increasing link partners and search engine rankings, it’s also
used to create partnerships and establish profitable
relationships with other webmasters. Link building is a tedious
process, but one of the best for getting free (sometimes not),
targeted hits from other websites.
