Introduction to Link Building Methods

Introduction

If you want to get free search engine traffic to your website, the best technique to use is posting multiple links that point to your website. There are many types of links, and some of the links can occur naturally, however, there are times when you may want to manually build the links. These actions are called Link Building.

Building one-way links

You can optimize link building by setting up one-way links. For example, let’s consider Site A, B, and C. In this scenario, Site B and Site C would link to your website, which is Site A. A direct link from Site B to Site A is considered a one-way link. The same is true if Site C directly links to Site A. If this set up is complete, then Site A has two one-way links from two different websites (Sites B and C).

One-way links are the most sought after types of links simply because others can link to you while you do not have to link to anyone else. The one-way linking process will actually make your site an authority site, which will help you obtain a great deal of search engine traffic. In addition, you will also be ranked higher on search engine results.

However, despite these great benefits, it is still one of the most difficult types of link-building methods to successfully obtain. This is simply due to the dependency on other sites. In this example, Site A is depending on Site B and Site C to one-way link without any reciprocity. However, it is still possible to acquire one-way links through a variety of ways. The first and most important way to gain one-way links is to make sure Site A (your site) has valuable web content that owners of Site B and Site C feel their readers will benefit from—this makes sense in linking the sites together without reciprocity. If Site A has also published several useful web-based tools that the owners of Site B and Site C could use and benefit from, then they will naturally link to Site A.

There are many other cases where Site A might tend to get natural one-way links from other websites. For instance, if you are a news website and always have the latest in news coverage, then chances are Site B and Site C will probably link to you naturally. If you publish web templates or themes, you will also get a one-way link from all those websites using your theme, your templates, or your software.

Building Two-Way links

The other type of link that you can manually build into your website is called a two-way link, or also called a Link Exchange. In this scenario, Site B links to Site A (your site). But, in return for that link, you are required to provide a link back to Site B as well. So in this scenario, you have one inbound link from Site B, but at the same time, you have one outgoing link to Site B as well. This is the method of reciprocity that creates a function called Link Exchange. This method has been around since people started making money from their blogs, in addition to realizing that search engines take into consideration the amount of links that are listed on your website. This helps search engines to determine how popular your website is and exactly how well the engine should rank your site.

A two-way link exchange is simple to set up, and is done the old-fashioned way by simply asking. For instance, the owner of Site B contacts the owner of Site A, or vice versa, and the decision is made as to whether the link exchange is possible.

This process can be easily repeated with other websites as well. For example, the owner of Site C could also contact you and suggest that you link to their site on a different page. In return, Site C will give you a link back to your website. This is one of the easier ways to build links to your website. The downside of this technique is that for every inbound link to your website, you must additionally produce and outbound link to the other website.

Building three-way links

Now, let’s get to the third method of building links into your website. The three-way linking method is yet another option to consider. In this method, Site A (your website) will link to Site B, and Site B will link to Site C via link exchange, as opposed to linking back to your website, Site A. This process creates a three-way link, or a three-way link exchange. None of these sites link to each other as they would in the case of a two-way link. Three-way linking can occur naturally, but in most cases, it is manually done by the webmasters contacting one another. In most cases, webmasters always use some sort of link exchange or link-building software to create three-way linking.

Natural Link Building and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing

The most desirable type of link is the one-way link. But then again, this is the most difficult link to obtain. So, other viable options include two-way and three-way links, or link exchanges. Even though these are the easier links to obtain, you want to make sure that your website has a good assortment of all kinds of link exchanges, rather than relying heavily on one type of link exchange. The three-way link is a solid choice because it hybrids one-way and two-way links. Let’s review the most important options in building natural links for your website.

Link building to increase SEO

First, link building and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) work well together to increase your ranking on search engine results. You will continue to receive free traffic from Google and other search engines as you continue to link build. As you begin to build your links, consider the quantity of links you choose to include on your website. The more one-way links you have pointing to your website, the better it is for your search engine and SEO marketing. But then again, these links should appear to be developing naturally. For instance, search engines use algorithmic tables to assess the natural popularity of your website. If you launch your website in one day, and suddenly receive 2,000 links to this tells search engines that you are doing something to get those 2,000 links unnaturally. Therefore, the search engines may decide to penalize your website, or they may decide to not give you the appropriate website rankings that you would actually deserve if the process occurred naturally. The whole purpose of SEO and link building is to optimize the natural ranking your site receives with the features you build within it.

Quality of links to increase website rank

Secondly, another important factor in your search engine performance is the quality of links. If Yahoo!, MSN, or even your own website links to back your website, this will increase your rank significantly. This is also a much higher-quality bump than getting links from other lesser-known websites. Of course, every webmaster would like to have the ability to get one-way links from established portals or authority sites. In most cases, you will need to accept links from a very wide range of quality sites. You will most likely need to accept links from new websites, established websites, and authority sites as well.

Ratio of incoming to outgoing links

Thirdly, another important aspect to consider is the actual amount of outgoing links. If your website is an authority site, and if it has excellent content, then readers will expect the content to be linking to several other external sites where they can access additional information. Any website, for that matter, must have a few outgoing links to other websites and other resources on the internet. Though, if you have too many outgoing links, then this will raise a red flag in search engines like Google. Search engines may determine that your website is doing nothing more than selling links to other websites.

Remember, the most important factor in setting up your link building is determining the amount of incoming links to your website. Now, the more incoming links you have, the better. In most cases, you should focus on getting more and more incoming links that are from a variety of quality levels. While you begin to start building incoming links, you will need to make sure it is natural. In addition, you need to make sure you have a small number of outgoing links. You should always make sure that the amount of incoming links is more than the amount of outgoing links.