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Link Building - Is It Worth It?

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.

In general terms, these two advertising methods are good solutions when you need quick traffic boosts in the shortest possible time frame. For a minimal amount of hours invested you can dramatically reduce the learning curve needed for the more traditional search engine optimisation. But as with everything in life there are advantages and disadvantages and search engine optimisation is definitely no exception.

If you were to begin cataloguing the sheer volume of existing online information you would become completely overwhelmed and extremely confused and very quickly. Services such as Google work hard at helping you sort through the clutter and confusion by delivering to you the most relevant search results based on your particular keyword searches. The tools offered by the search companies are becoming more and more intuitive each day, but ultimately these services must also work on their own business model to continue offering the service they do. Which brings us to our next point...

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.

Another technique by which to hike up rankings is by providing quality information that is both highly relevant and targeted towards a particular set of keywords pre-determined by the website. With careful market study and a study of consumer behavior, businesses can study just what keywords yield traffic, and subsequently shape their business website in order to best address the demand.

However, one of the more effective ways to increase traffic to your website is through the process of link building. Link building is a process through which you try to obtain links from other websites that lead back to your website. Through approaching websites of similar interest to yours, both businesses can enjoy the mutual benefits and assist in giving users a better browsing experience.

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.

Through this link building process is important to create the impression of expertise and knowledge. This impression will convey your website as respected and increases the level of marketability and trust. As this trust and respect increases so will the amount of related websites wishing to be affiliated with you.

Another avenue for building your link campaign, is to review products, articles, and services offered by other companies on their website. This vote of confidence provides a very good reason for these companies to link back to your website, as in doing so, makes their products and services see more attractive to their potential customers. The mutual benefits of this technique can be highly rewarding for both parties.

As any good business owner will tell you, you should always be looking for the most effective ways to market your business. You should always assess the suitability of Web sites you would like to become connected with. If you suspect that a website owner is involved in unethical search engine marketing techniques, you would be well advised to listen to your gut and look at another potential site as a linking partner. If you are new at the game, it can be sometimes difficult to spot warning signs, but I always find that a person's character and track record are a great guide to use when experience in the field is often limited.

Make your site relevant and reputable for the best possible link building opportunities. Through effective link building, your business will cut through the clutter like a beacon in the night. Research your market, seek out possible link associations, offer that site owner a benefit for that Association and watch your site rise. I wish you all the best in business as in life.

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