Link Building for Google? 
Link Building.
Everyone is discussing PageRank, Back links, reciprocal links and three way linking but why is there so much mystery surrounding this topic and who should you believe? Is it true that Google penalises buying links for PageRank or do systematic approaches breach Google’s terms of service? Can you be banned in Google for joining link schemes?
The answers are not simple but there is some proof out there of what works and what doesn’t.
Why the mystery?
Simply put if we all knew how Google counts links in the ranking of a website then we could all manipulate the system to gain a first page positions. So it’s reasonable to assume. we don’t know and even if we think we do, we’re probably wrong.
You can use logic to get a starting point though. So linking needs to be natural I.E. if your website suddenly obtains 1000 back links in a very short space of time would be unnatural behaviour. This would occur If you bought a package of links from say a company in India, where you can purchase links en masse. You’re not likely to see any long lasting improvement in your search engine positions using this as a method.
Let’s submit the site to hundreds of directories. Not a great idea either. Having your web site listed in hundreds of insignificant directories that have hundreds of outbound links on each page will not get you a positive effect in search engines.
What about blogs then. This can improve your listings provided that you are able to become an authority on your subject and the blog has a really good reputation and is of a similar theme to your web site. This takes effort and time but submitting links to blogs that are unrelated to your content is again a waste of your time.
How about creating several related websites to your main website and then link from those to your main site. This could work but other factors come into play such as; the IP addresses of these web sites and their age and freshness of the content they have.
You could try press releases via news type websites these will have an immediate effect but after a short time the content usually becomes out of date and doesn’t carry the same impact. But provided you can release informative content on a regular basis and you have a decent budget it is a strategy.
As Google has evolved it has become far more sophisticated in the way it counts links. In our knowledge it is not likely that Google would ban you for buying links, in fact we’ve never seen that happen in the last eleven years. If the link has no value it’s simply disregarded.
You can’t cut corners when it comes to link building. I’ve seen many examples where just a few highly on topic authoritative links have made a major impact on a web sites positioning in Google.
Can linking outbound make a difference? Yes they can though you need to make sure that whoever you link to is in a good neighbourhood. This means that the site you link to is not already penalised in Google or worse still banned altogether. You must also be sure that the site you link to is on topic and relevant to your website otherwise the outbound link is of no use to you or them. Linking outbound to valuable content can enhance your users experience and therefore is seen as positive.
Getting a link back from such a site is called a reciprocal link and would also be seen as useful and therefore would count in the ranking process. Exchanging links is a real solution to this problem as long as the links you give and receive are on topic, relevant and on theme.
You don’t need thousands of these links as that wouldn’t be natural but a few well thought out links will help you on your way to the top.
For help on link building please call us on 0161 408 5054 we can help you save time (which is money), by creating an ethical link building strategy for you company that won’t cost the earth.
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