How to build links to your website

It’s tempting to think that simply submitting your link to every directory you can find and exchanging links with anyone willing will help your site ranking. In truth, it does take some finesse and a little work. Some sites can even hurt your ranking.

Of course because Google’s algorithm is kept more secure than Fort Knox we can only speculate as to what best practices are for improving your page rank. And speculation is closely related to opinion, and opinion, well everyone has one. So there’s no real consensus on some strategies but here are some generally accepted tips to help your site.

Reciprocal links: Previously it was common practice to exchange as many links as possible and it would help your site’s ranking. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. More valuable are one-way backlinks–links coming from a site to yours. These links carry more weight than reciprocal links. Especially if the link to your site is coming from a highly ranked site. The theory it seems is that if a site is referring to your site all on its own then your site must have some value. Also valuable is if the link is in the block of text and not in the blogroll.

But reciprocal links aren’t necessarily bad. there are just better ways to spend your time building links. So don’t overdo it. If there is a relevant site, go ahead and exchange links, otherwise don’t waste your time hunting down webmasters.

Don’t exchange links with irrelevant sites: If you are in the pet grooming business don’t exchange links with gaming sites. Stick with sites that are complimentary to yours and that you aren’t in direct competition with. If you are a pet groomer an exchange with a dog trainer can be a good match.

Google may hold a grudge if you submit to a link farm or a page with nothing but links. On the other hand, you can locate a few important directories–these are usually the paid ones–and submit your site there.

Use Social Media networking sites: And make sure they link back to your blog. Set up accounts with Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube at the very least, as well as other sites like Digg, StumbleUpon or Delicious and make sure they link back to your site. You can also integrate your RSS feed.

Link to your own pages within your site: Yes you can get backlinks to yourself by linking pages. But make sure the links are relevant, linking from one related article to another. Speaking of linking your pages, when you use hyper links in your posts or web copy make sure it’s a keyword and not a “click here” text link to help with SEO.

Finally, create your own buzz: It’s great when articles published on the web link to your site so why not create your own articles? Rewrite some of your existing web content and submit the articles to a web article directory like EZineArticles with a backlink at the bottom.