Link
Building Then...
When
I began link building in 1994, nobody gave much though to it
There were
just a few crawler based search engines, like Excite, Webcrawler,
and Lycos, directories like Yahoo, and
very few places where people could announce and seek attention for web
sites, like Lycos'
TOP 5%.
There was no "link analysis",
no link popularity and no Pagerank, because there was no Google.
Search Engine Optimization had nothing to do with link building, and link
building was practiced by just a handful of folks like myself. On 286's
with modems.
Link Building
Now...
Link
Building In 2011 - Everybody cares, but why?
Many reasons,
but mostly because some types of links improve your site's search rank
We now have tools
and tactics and schemes and scams
for building links,
publicity, and "buzz"
links pages
web guides
web directories
link farms
blogs
splogs
social linking
paid links
press release links
article links
And...we have companies
all over the world claiming expertise and selling linking related services
which are 100% useless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
The
fabric of the web itself, links, can serve as signals of quality
Links
have become the currency of the web
Audiences
for your links:
You now
have
two audiences
for your links:
1). People
who click them
2). Search
Engines that judge and score them
........
What
can links do for your site?
Links can
accomplish four
things:
1). Direct click
traffic
Links can be from pages related to your niche
that send you a direct clicks. Example niche:SPEED
TV Best Of The Web. Digg, and even
Twitter
or paid links can bring direct click traffic.
2). Search rank
Links that help search rank will be
earned by content merit, originate from source sites engines trust, and
be put in place by people who could be described as "curators of quality".
Here's a great
example of a merit based link venue.
3). Both
A link that can help rank
and send
direct click traffic is a rare thing. Your niche's most trusted
source sites are different than mine.
4). Neither
A link that can neither help rank or send
direct click traffic. The vast majority of web.
Effective
link building involves multiple strategies, including
Basics:
The links anyone
can get - like directories wide and vertical
Merit based earned
by quality of content:
Links from "curators"
- those looking for the most useful sites in their niche
Online public
relations:
Blogger outreach
Linkbait:
Useful, funny, or
controversial
paid links:
For advertising,
not search rank
On-site link optimization
Tactics
to avoid...
Buying links
in an attempt to trick Google
Cookie cutter packaged
link services
Linking decisions
based on a search engines only
Tactics which the
engines have stated are against Quality Guidelines
See: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
Remember...
In general,
the easier any link is to obtain, the less useful that link is likely to
be
The specific approach
used for any given web site should be different based on each site's focus,
content, and intended audience
Example:
What is a high value
link target for this site?
....http://www.beeculture.com
Would it be a link from a random web directory
like
this?
No.
It would be a link from a topically relevant
and "curated" site like
this
What is a high value
link target for this site?
....http://disney.go.com/cars/cars2/
A link from a site that's
devoted to upcoming movie releases, like
this
A link from a site
devoted Disney vacation Club members, like
this
The point?
The type
of links that help one site are not the same that will help another site,
and every site has its own linking potential.
