Best link building for Search Engine Optimisation

In this article we are going to look at best ways to earn links back to your site and what not to do. Whether you’re a website owner, webmaster or search engine optimiser (SEO), you’ll know that there is no time in your backlink campaign to accommodate annoying link partners. Don’t be one of them; it will harm you in the long run. Always keep in mind that when you request a link or link exchange, there is a real person reviewing the request. You need to keep your request polite and gracious. Especially with one-way links, you need them more than they need you and that is exactly how you should approach it. For search engine optimisation (SEO), you need to keep your backlinks relevant. When Google judges your website, the relevancy of backlinks / outgoing links will be taken into consideration. Relevancy of your links is also valuable to your target audience. If your site is about online marketing and your link is up on a pet toys site, it is very unlikely you will generate any traffic. Don’t force time limits on your prospective link partners. Demanding for your link request to be complied with in a certain time is rude and will be ignored. Consider this situation. There is a website you would like to have link to you but you don’t feel their PageRank is high enough just yet. You may only want high PageRank backlinks but the best thing to do is ask for a link before it increases. A good website’s PageRank will no doubt increase with time and when it does they’ll be pickier about who they link to. Rather develop a good relationship with them now. Another reason would be that a link should rather be judged on its relevancy rather than PageRank. If you want a reciprocal link then put an external link on your website before asking for one from theirs. E-mail them to say "I've put your link up here..." and with the same email write your html code that you would like used for your link eg: so that your prospective link partner can easily cut and paste your link and add it to his own pages. This shows good faith and that you are not just looking for many one way links. When somebody links to your website but the link does not appear exactly as you would want it, don’t demand it to be changed. If you’re insistent that it needs to change then provide them with a few options on how it should appear. But if the link could damage your search engine optimisation strategies, (e.g. offensive title in anchor text) then you have every right to complain. Avoid linking to poorly organised website directories with no clear categories. Linking to these kinds of directories will be a waste of your time. No internet user will be able to find your link and search engines won’t place much value on this link either. Choose a well organised directory as they will have a higher PageRank and users will frequent these directories more often. You will be dealing with people whatever your backlink strategy is, so remember to be careful and cooperative. To discuss linking strategies further, leave a comment here or visit our SEO Forum.