SEO Series: Link Building for Blogs, What is it?

When it comes to SEO, inbound links are extremely important factors that guide your website’s ranking for various pages. Link building comprises any steps that you as a website owner might take to point links back to your website from another site.

SEO Link Building Examples

1. Link Exchanges – Asking a website owner to link to your website and vice-versa.
2. Guest Blogging – Guest blogging provides bloggers the opportunity to not only demonstrate expertise within a certain subject, but will also increase exposure and direct traffic to your website.
3. Link to Your Page – Simply setting up a page on your website explaining how someone can link back to you is an effective link building strategy.
4. Link Marketing – If you write for various publications or submit an article to another website or article directory, you are most likely including some of your personal information, in which case you may provide links back to various pages on your website.

Steps to Proper SEO Link Building

1. Create a List of Competitors – Before you begin your link building, you must create a strategy. This begins with drafting a list of your competitors. Make sure you realize the difference between search competitors and “real world” competitors. Your search competitors are websites that are ranking high and occupying the top positions for the keywords you’re targeting. “Real world” competitors however, are blogs with similar or highly related content, but that may not necessarily rank well. Remember, here we’re targeting SEO. 
2. Check Competitors Stats – Use a link checking tool such as Open Site Explorer, Yahoo! Site Explorer, or Majestic SEO, to check the number of links and domain authority for each competitor. The competitors with the highest numbers are those you should set a goal to beat. This may seem like a daunting task, so it is always acceptable to start with a smaller goal – not necessarily aiming for the one or two top positions on any given search engine results page.
3. Target Links List – Gauge a target goal for your link building. This will be different for each website – a small private website may have less links than a larger website.
4. Enjoy the Networking Experience! – Remember, you are exchanging links with like-minded entrepreneurs such as yourself. Who knows where it will take you.