Why Are Links Important?

To put it simply: a link is a vote. Every link pointing to your site from another website tells the search engines that the other site finds your resource valuable and thus, the engines read this as a vote for your site. So it must be about getting tons of links and you're done right? Wrong. This is incorrect as ...

Not All Votes Are Created Equal

Unlike your own vote in an election, some votes are worth more than others and some votes are worth SIGNIFICANTLY more than yours .The basic factors that affect a link's value to your website are: The site strength, Relevance, Anchor text, Position

The site strength - the strength of the site that is pointing to yours is a significant (and historically abused) factor in the valuation of links. In the absence of other easily-visible criteria let's look at PageRank as a key valuation of a site's strength. If a site with a PageRank 8 links to your site, this vote is worth significantly more than a link from a PageRank 3 site. This is because a PageRank 8 site is, in Google's eyes, a more important site than the PageRank 3 site.

Relevance - the relevance of a site linking to you is, if anything, more important than a site's strength. If you run a bed a breakfast in Utah a link from a PageRank 3 bed and breakfast will be worth more than a link from a PageRank 5 web design site. This area is a bit grey in that it relies on the engine's ability to determine what is relevant and what is not however we've seen evidence that this area is strong at this stage in the game and is only becoming more important over time.

Anchor text - the actual text used to link to your site is extremely important. I've seen extremely strong sites get beaten out by weak ones simply due to the poor use of anchor test. If you're building links to your site be sure to include your keywords in the text that links back and, if possible, the exact phrase you are trying to rank for. At the same time, you can't make all your anchor text exactly the same - how can that possibly look natural?

Position - the position of a link on a page and the number of other links on that page impacts the value of a link. A link in the footer of a page is given less weight than a link near the top, a link in the content of a page is given more weight than a link in a list of links and a link on a page with 50 other links is given less weight than a link on a page with only a few other links. If we think about it - this makes sense. All of these things indicate whether the site with the outbound links actually intends for one of their visitors to click the link or not. From an engine's perspective - the more it appears that a site wants a link to be clicked on, the higher the weight that link (or vote) is given.

Admittedly there are a number of other factors but this is a beginner’s guide. Following the considerations above will insure that as you make each link decision - you're odds of making the right choices will be significantly higher than if you ignore them. Ignoring them may not get you penalized or banned but it will make your task far more time consuming as you secure less valuable links and thus need to build far more than following the right methods.

Contextual Link Building Strategy

Link building is very essential for all those people who have websites operating on the net. It is a complicated process which involves getting links for other sites to your own website. If your site is using this technique in an appropriate manner then the search tool would show your site among the top ten in the search results.

The popularity of your website also depends on the links pointing to your website. This process can be done by creating reciprocal responses through blogs, RSS, newsletters, e-zines, search engines and directories. It can either be a two way process or one way process.

There are many advantages of this process that is why all the web creators are engaged in it to get inbound links to their sites:

•     It helps in increasing the traffic of your website.
•     The popularity of your website also goes up through the link building process.
•     It helps in improving the visibility of your website in search engine.
•     You can also rank among the top ten by improving your link building techniques.
•     It helps in saving your advertising money and crucial time.
•     You also get the advantage of added resource to your website.
•     Your website gets the much needed exposure through link building.

Contextual Link Building

This is a very new process which is a unique way of website promotion. It is done by creating back links in the content. Search engines are always looking for new and unique contents; if your website has some exceptional content then it can be on the top of the search results. Article submission is one of the best ways of this process. You can easily submit in-content responses with an article of 300 to 400 words. But to be on the safer side you need to insure that your blog is set up on an exclusive IP not in C class IP. To get more profits you can even try getting back links from high PR and popular blogs.

This method is becoming a popular SEO strategy but it should be done very safely and properly. If you submit a single article to a large number of article directories then your article can also be penalized. For getting the maximum number of responses the article should be original, there should be less use of the keywords and the text should be relevant to the keywords