Sunday, August 10, 2008

SEO Meets Marketing: Link Building, Is It For You?

By Steve Nicel


With many businesses engaging in advertising wars in order to win over the majority of the Internet's viable market, it's easy to deduce the intensity of the competition. After all, the Internet and its network of information grow exponentially by the minute, while the increase in the number of users more or less takes a little slower.

In the hopes of gaining a steady traffic flow to your company Web site, some businesses utilise paid advertising on high exposure commercial portals of the Internet. If traffic volume is already established on these large portals with a proven advertising model, this can be a great way to launch your Web site and start getting traffic immediately. Pay per click (PPC) is another great way of getting instant traffic to your website because this requires no start-up costs at all. The big advantage of this model is that you only pay for the traffic that is generated from the advertisers Web site directly to your Web site.

These two methods of advertising are good when you're looking for a quick boost of direct web site traffic in the search engines paid query results. In direct contrast to organic search engine ranking, you are able to expose your website quickly to a potentially huge consumer market without investing long hours and the associated learning curve for more traditional organic search engine ranking.

If you were to think about the volume of existing information online you would be completely overwhelmed. It is this fact what people use search engines to help them sort through the Internet clutter and return relevant search results based on what they are looking for. These search engine tools are becoming more effective for users to access the information they want and most search engines are becoming more effective at returning useful information based on the users keywords.

Google states that you must play by their rules if you want to use their services. They are expending a lot of energy ensuring that advertisers create ads with a high degree of relevancy to their advertised Web site. It therefore stands to reason that advertisers who stray from this requirement will be penalised to the extent of removing the advertisers listing from the returned list of search query results. This is to ensure a higher quality of advertised listings and guarantee more useful information will be returned to the search engine user. More relevant search returns; more perceived value in that particular search engine.

The primary aim should always be to provide quality information in a highly relevant context and target keywords that relate closely to your websites main topic or theme. Your search engine marketing should always retain a primary focus on studying which keywords yield traffic that benefits your business the most, then set about structuring your web site to meet this demand. Enter link building for your business.

The third and best long-term strategy for increasing traffic to your website comes from the process of link building. Our goal with this method is to obtain back links from other websites that demonstrate to the search engines we have a web site of authority. Back links are simply the term used for getting other websites, preferably of high authority themselves, to provide a link on their site leading back to our site.

Link building for your website can single-handedly offer the best returns for your SEO program. Over time, the experience gained will make you more effective at choosing potential link partners and other websites to publish your links on. The returns for link building can be twofold, the first is direct page visits from the link on relevant websites, the second is the search engine ranking boost that comes from attaining relevant links.

This can be done first, by creating the impression of expertise in a particular field. By creating this impression both among colleagues and clients, the website becomes respected. Moreover, this can create a level of marketability on the part of the website, which will give people an easier time to trust the content of the pages. In effect, it becomes easier to build links with another website who may wish to be affiliated to the image and reputation built by the business.

Another proven method for developing your linking campaign is to review services products and articles on other companies high authority Web sites. When you provide value to another person or business, you increase the likelihood of that business wanting to use your appraisal in their own advertising strategy. If they do, you stand to gain another back link to your own Web site which further solidifies your position as a site of authority.

Integral to the decision of building links with websites is the determination of the suitability of a particular website to become a link partner. Emphasis is placed on decent linking partners that more or less practice the same brand of ethical SEO as your own. Moreover, targeting possible link partners who will be amenable to the idea of exchanging links is very important. By targeting relevant link-building sites, the business gets a better opportunity to gain real link partners who will eventually link the business to their website.

Make your site relevant, congruence and reputable for possible link building campaigns. Through effective link building, businesses search engine ranking will increase.

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