• Written by Paul Taylor, Webmarketing123

If you want to rank well, acquire targeted traffic, and build a strong brand, you should have a focused link-building program in place, as a part of your overall SEO strategy. A good link building strategy will help you in many ways, including:

• Improving the popularity of your website and direct more traffic to it
• Increasing the web site’s search engine ranking
• Saving a lot of advertising spend
• Increasing the page rank of the web site
• Generating additional business at very low incremental cost

Most major search engines use incoming links as a weighing factor in their ranking algorithms. It’s important to understand that the quality of the websites carrying your incoming links is as important as the empirical number of incoming links.

Directory submission is one of the most effective ways to build up link popularity. Offering a quality website with good content is always a surefire way to build-up link popularity.

Link popularity is important and the link building process needs to be given high priority. Link analysis will only gain more importance with search engines. Search engines are resistant to manipulation and they are finding a legitimate way to measure the importance of a site. Since link building takes time, the sooner you start, the better. Therefore, please consider link building as a long-term investment for your site.

What are the types of links I can establish?

There are two types of links you can establish:

One-way links

To establish ‘only-incoming’ links also called ‘one-way links’ or ‘Non-Reciprocal links’. Only incoming links are established on other websites,and you do not need to link back to those websites. One way links from quality directories help to generate additional traffic to your site and help improve search engine rankings of your site.

Reciprocal links

Reciprocal links are a quicker way to establish links to your web site. Some very important factors to consider while engaging in reciprocal link building are:

• The page where your link is being put up should not have an excessive number of links
• The site should be related to your subject
• The spcecific page of the site where your link is being placed should be indexed by search engines

Paying close attention to your link building strategy will go a long way in helping your web site rank better.

About the Author

Paul Taylor is President of WebMarketing123, an SEO partner of Creative-Ops with offices in Oakland and Los Angeles. Webmarketing123's proven Search Engine Optimization techniques have exploded clients' search rankings, sales, sales leads and return on marketing investment.