As you may know already, one of the best ways to promote your website cheaply and efficiently is through link building. Like many things, the phrase “quality is better than quantity” applies here as well. There are sites with millions of spam links that have basically no representation in the search engines, while there are also sites that are ranked #1 for their keyword even though they only have four or five backlinks.
The difference here, of course, is quality. There are a few simple steps that you can take to be certain that you are building quality links for your website that will actually give you results for your effort.
First of all, avoid spam. This should be a no-brainer, but many people just have to learn the hard way and try to take the easy way out. Spam, through methods such as mass blog commenting or forum spamming, is a very black hat route to take. Risky methods such as these can actually make your search engine placements worse, meaning you are only hurting your website while wasting your time and money. However tempted you may be to try spam promotion – avoid it like the plague.
When you go for quality link building, you also want to pursue links that are relevant to the content on your website. Even if there’s a really great quality fashion website that you can purchase a link from, it probably won’t help much if the product you are selling is lawn mowers – you get the point. If you are using article directories or web directories, be sure and select the category that is closest in relevance to your topic; this will help you get the most benefit from each link that you post up.
Another criteria to look at for quality link building is the age of the websites that you are getting your links from. Because the search engines know that the older sites are more likely to be trustworthy, they also carry more weight when it comes to the value of links that you get from them. The only problem is that buying links from reputable aged websites can be quite a bit more expensive than purchasing links from brand new websites. The best way to do this without busting your wallet is to go after aged web directories. Also, if you prefer, article directories work alright as well. Either way, you should be able to quickly find quality directories that have been around for a while.
Earlier, I mentioned that quality is definitely more important than quantity. The truly best option, though, is both quality and quantity. By getting a large number of quality links, you can boost your website to the top of the results and start receiving tons of traffic on a regular basis. Bulk directory submissions or other massive link building campaigns are a great way to get your link out on the web in mass quantities while still retaining the high quality that you need. If you always strive to put forth a quality effort, you will get quality results!