Link Building

Introduction

Having inbound links is one of the most important aspects of SEO because having many sites on the internet link to your site improves the quality of your site in the eyes of the search engine. They assume that most people will be linking to good sites and not bad ones - which is true. One of the things beginning webmasters do when they launch a page is to start a "link swapping program". They usually create a page on their site for links and then email as many webmasters of other sites as they can to exchange links. Since most other webmasters are eager to build inbound links also, they usually agree to it. This process can also be automated.

Link Swapping Programs

I think link swapping programs are a bad idea and that many webmasters do them because they are told that they should. Most of them will not agree with me and if they don't then I understand. Later in this page I explain how to properly create an inbound links strategy. For now, here is a list of reasons why I think link swapping is a bad idea.

  • You can get links online without swapping - You can use signature links in web forums. But don't overdue this. Don't sign up for a forum just to post your link and give 1-word posts. Webmasters who run forums can tell you are doing this and it pisses them off. But if you add a legitimate post then many webmasters won't mind you putting in a signature link because they appreciate you taking part of their forums and building their traffic. Another way to get links is through some affiliate programs you do business with that will have a links page on their sites just for their affiliates. The good thing about this is that the affiliate program site and will usually be a high-ranking site - their links will have more weight with Google than a random site. Another way to get some links is to submit your page to the big directories like DMOZ (this is something you will definitely want to do irrelevant of SEO).

  • Link farms are an insult to visitors - Many people talk about how "banner farms" are useless and counterproductive. To me, many webmasters build a links page and links to so many sites that their links page just becomes a link farm. When I go to a page on someone's that says "Here are some useful links" and I see 200 links that have nothing to do with the subject matter of the site then I consider it a waste of my time and an insult to my intelligence that the webmaster is trying to tell me these links are there for my benefit.

  • The benefits and costs are hard to be quantified or measured - There are plenty of sites out there that did link building and became popular but that doesn't mean they became popular because of the link building. If their site also did other good SEO or PPC advertising then you couldn't know how much of a factor the link building had in the success. There are guidelines that tell you what your Pagerank will be given a certain number of links but that still doesn't give you the ability to quantify the benefits in terms of traffic and profits to calculate the return on your investment (which in this case is your time).

  • The time it takes to build links could be better spent - Look at all the time it takes to do a link swapping program manually: finding sites, checking the page ranks of the sites and individual pages that you are looking at, contacting other webmasters, entering the links on your site, making sure the site you swapped with has a link back to you, changing links when webmasters change their pages, monitoring dead links, etc. All that time could be better spent creating content, which would create natural links to your site.

  • Very popular sites shouldn't have a links page - If your site is really popular, or you honestly think it will be, then you don't need to swap links. If your site does become popular then you'll have a popular site that sends a lot of traffic to smaller sites while the smaller sites won't be sending much to you.

  • Link building benefits your competition - Link swaps occur mainly between sites within the same niche. In other words, you are sending visitors to your competition. An argument can be made that if your site is better than the competitor's site then it won't matter in the long run but that's a weak argument. I sometimes laugh at the fact that start-up sites go around to the competition and look to partner with them. These are the guys you should be trying to beat - not trying to help. Link swapping falls into one of those webmaster strategies that actually runs counter to what you are actually trying to accomplish. Why are you swapping links? Do you actually want people to leave your site to go somewhere else? Hell no.

  • It doesn't create a long-term advantage - Swapping links is easy to do and, therefore, anyone is capable of doing it. If all webmasters go out and get 1,000 links each then all of them still have the same number of links as everyone else. Good webmasters know, like all good business owners know, that being successful is simply a result of being better than your competition.

  • The Search Engines don't like it - The search engines don't like you doing anything "artificial". Search engines use inbound links as a measure of how much interest other people on the internet have in the content of your site. Creating links ONLY to build inbound links distorts the number of genuine links to your site. This means one of Google's inputs is being manipulated. Given Google's constant re-evaluation of their algorithms this means they will probably either penalize webmasters who artificially increase inbound links or eventually phase out link count as an important factor.

  • In the end it won't matter - If your site isn't good enough to be successful without swapping links then link swapping won't improve anything. Good marketing won't save a bad site.

  • You will still get links - If your site is somewhat popular then you will receive emails offering reciprocal links from webmasters who have already put your link on their site and they are asking you for a link back. If you don't put up a reciprocal link within a certain amount of time then your link will disappear from their site. If you get these don't do anything and don't email them back. Even if they delete the link, these "limited time" link exchanges will build links to your site without any effort from you. Please note that I am not advocating you fool people into linking to you. If you actually are offering a reciprocal link offer then definitely link back to them. I am talking about situations where you are making no offers at all for link programs and get unsolicited offers for reciprocal links. If they are going to link to you assuming you will link back then let them and you don't then that is their mistake.

A successful link-building strategy

Do you want to hear the best kept secret to building the most efficient link building program? The Answer - an original web site with unique content. If you build a nice site, there will be tons of bloggers, other webmasters, and posters on forums who will post links to your site. Now you have tons of people linking to your page where it won't take any of your time and you don't have to link back so you won't lose traffic.

The best long-term plan is to get successful without swapping links. When you first launch your site you will probably want to get a couple of good sites to link to you just to get a couple of high-quality links on the Internet. Then just let your site grow through other means (SEO, CPC, word-of-mouth, or whatever). One of my main points is that I am not disagreeing with the popular wisdom that says that having inbound link is important. I am saying that you should be able to get natural links to your site without having to do link swapping - and if you can't then your website has more fundamental problems. Natural links are those that people add to the web voluntarily and on their own. Blogs, forums posts, and random web sites will post links to pages they like because good pages are worth talking about - just like good movies or TV shows.

You will probably want to check your "natural" links on the internet about once a month to see how big your link count is getting as well as seeing objective feedback about your page. You can do this by typing "link:http://www.yoursite.com" into Google. This is also a good way of checking in on your competition and seeing how many links they have.

Doing link swaps

Although I don't recommend link swapping because I think there are better ways to build inbound links it probably won't harm your site so if you insist on doing it then here are a few guidelines:

  • Only try to swap links with sites that are bigger than yours or sites that are the same size. Do not swap links with start-up sites that you can tell won't grow (hopefully you can tell). By linking to less-popular sites you are diluting the effect of your link-building program as well as letting your site build traffic for other people. As a webmaster you will always be getting emails (daily even) saying "I was just on your site and I loved it. I just started a site. Let's swap links". Don't bother answering these and don't feel bad. It's not your job to get his site to grow - that's his job.

  • Only swap links that are in the same category as your site. You will have more credibility in the eyes of the search engines. When it comes to links, quality counts more than quantity.

  • Try to get people who link to you to use different anchor text in their links to you. If you have 5,000 links to your site and all the anchor text is the same then Google will assume it is some type of automated link creation happening (i.e. low-quality or "fake" links) and most times they will be right.

  • Don't get too many links too quickly. This tip is somewhat discretionary. If you get tons and tons of links right away then Google may think you are using automated means of doing this. But there will be times where a site that is new explodes in popularity and has legitimate links and I'm sure Google knows this. So, in my opinion, I think Google probably takes into consideration link growth and may use it as a red flag and also look at other factors like anchor text. If your site is passively building legitimate links at a very quick rate by running a very unique and popular site then I wouldn't worry about it. But if you are running an automated program or even doing manual link swaps on a high volume basis then I think this rule should be taken into consideration.

  • Wait until your website is done before sending out link requests. Before your site is done you can make a list of sites and contact emails so you will be all set to go right after your launch.

  • Don't use webrings. They are amateur looking and aren't effective anyway.


 
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