Link building basics for SEO

It is now common knowledge, at least among online marketers and search engine optimization (SEO) specialists, that the success of a SEO campaign is dependent to a great extent on the success of link building efforts. Greater the number of links from high-quality, relevant websites, greater the chances of a website getting ranked higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords.

When undertaking a link building project, there are three criteria to be borne in mind:

* Quantity of links: More the number of links, the better it is
* Quality of links: Better the quality of pages and websites from which the links are obtained, greater the weightage of those links to the overall link popularity of a site
* Relevance of links: Greater the relevance of the sites from which the inbound links are obtained, better the results will be with the overall off-site SEO efforts.

Focus the link building campaign on the above three aspects to achieve optimum results.

How to embark on a SEO link building campaign

The key to building high organic search engine rankings is to ensure that the search engines view the site to be 'naturally' relevant to its target users. Therefore, all efforts in the various aspects of SEO, including boosting link popularity, should take into consideration the need to make them seem natural.

This is a tedious process which requires patience and perseverance; however, the benefits of getting good quality inbound links will certainly be worth the effort.

Building one-way links for a website is definitely with this one-to-one approach is much more challenging as it involves convincing the other party of the merits of linking to the site. Some common ways that can be used to build one ways links are directory submissions (both paid and free) as well as buying links on relevant websites. The latter approach (buying text links) is still under a cloud and there is a debate on their value to improving search engine rankings. Of course, as long as the links provided are related and relevant.

Alternatively, many SEO professionals opt for building reciprocal links, where in they swap links with another website. These links are deemed to be less valuable than a one-way link from a good quality website, but as long as the 'reciprocal' links are relevant (thematically), these may continue to offer some value in the SEO process.