The link building process involves two steps: integration and accretion. Integration requires the consolidation of relevant elements into a whole Web site, while accretion is the use of several methods in order to increase links to your site and boost page rankings. The end result of any link building campaign is increased link popularity and better search engine rankings.

• Link Popularity

To understand the relevance of link building, it is crucial that we understand exactly what search engines are looking for in a site and what factors influence a site’s page ranking and link popularity. The theory of link popularity assumes that if search engines view other sites linking to yours, your site must be a winner and consequently, deserves an upperhand in rankings. After all, people are more likely to link to sites they find interesting or relevant. It is a common misconception that the Google Page Rank is equivalent to link popularity. In reality, Google PR is merely a subset of link popularity.

PR focuses on the quantitative side while link popularity emphasizes on the qualitative factors. Building link popularity is considered one of the most tedious tasks in SEO. Unlike before, search engines now have quality control mechanisms in place that boot out “artificially created” or useless links so that today, strategies that result to artificial links can earn penalties or point negations in a web site’s rankings. Search engines today require links that come from authoritative sites or sites that focus on the same areas as your web site. Major search engines consider link popularity in their ranking algorithms to measure a site’s importance.

There are two types of links that give a boost to link popularity:

1. Links from other sites using like keyword phrases as your site
2. Links from relevant categories from industry-specific portals and major directories

Experts warn about paying for submission on free-for-all, or FFA, sites that are not viewed as quality links by major search engines. Moreover, getting links from sites that are completely outside the range or field of interest of your Web site will not earn you high points on the rankings.

• Link Acquisition Strategies When launching a link building campaign independently or when you are using a link building service or hiring a link building company, you have to take note that while many strategies exist that could help you acquire links, abusing these strategies will downgrade your search engine rankings.

Among the top SEO techniques that have been prone to abuse or manipulation include:

1. Link Buying. Many bloggers and webmasters buy links in order to boost their page rankings. It is also the easiest way to build link popularity. Link buys are frowned upon by major search engines like Google and SEO experts advise against link buys. However, some have found ways to buy links without getting into the search engine’s radar and others find link buying useful in launching viral, social media campaigns that have a specific end date.
2. Link exchange. A link exchange is a network of websites operating as a web ring by registering under a central organization running the exchange and in turn, receiving an HTML code to be inserted into their web pages. This HTML code runs a display of banner advertisements on member web sites. Link exchanges, or reciprocal linking, are the most common link acquisition approach for bloggers and webmasters.
3. Link Farming. Link farms are made up of a bogus network of blogs, and from that fake network, they create links to their web site. Though an effective link popularity builder in the past, stricter quality control mechanisms of search engines have prompted an avoidance of this strategy.

Effective methods in getting links include link baiting, directory submissions, comments, article submissions, and writing testimonials or reviews. There are several specialized SEOs and link building service that are capable of helping you perform some of the above-mentioned strategies.

• Ideal Link Profile There are ideal ways to ensure that your web site is rated positively by the search engines. Among the important things to consider are:

1. One link per linking domain. Try getting one or two links from a website that wants to link to yours.
2. Fewer Reciprocal Links. Reciprocal links are easily detectable and subject to point negations. It is best to keep reciprocal links below 5% of your site’s total linkage.
3. Varied Anchor Text. Vary keywords in the anchor text to avoid red flags from search engines.
4. Related Links. Acquire links from web sites that share relevant content to get better page rankings.

• What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or URL. They are often used interchangeably with inbound links, incoming links, inward links, and inlinks. In the world of SEO, backlinks, like PageRank, are an indicator of link popularity or importance of a particular web page. The weight that search engines like Google ascribe to quality backlinks when calculating SERP have made backlinks a building block for excellent SEO. Search engines consider pages with a substantial number of quality backlinks more relevant or more important than others when coming up with SERP. Link building is a vital tool that gives Internet businesses direct traffic, better position in the search engine rankings, and more profits. For any link building campaign to prevail and reap these benefits, webmasters or site owners need not rely on merely the quantity of backlinks pointing to their site, but the quality of backlinks as well. The usage of proper search engine optimization techniques and link building methods should take these facts into consideration.

• Quality Matters.

In getting inbound links for link popularity, quality matters. Search engines like Google compute the relevancy of a site based on the importance or relevancy of the backlinks pointing to that site. It is not enough to get as many inbound links as possible; we need to look at the quality of these backlinks. Quality is usually determined by the content of a specific site. When backlinks to your site come from other sites that have related content to your site, these backlinks are judged as relevant by the search engines. However, if these backlinks are from sites with unrelated content, search engines consider them less relevant. The more relevant the backlinks are to your site, the greater their quality. Moreover, there are several factors that influence a backlink’s value. When backlinks come from “high authority” sites, they are highly valuable.

• Importance of Anchor Text

One thing you need to consider in back link building is the anchor text of your backlinks. An anchor text is a description of the inbound link and must contain useful information relevant to the content on the linked page. There are tools like search engine bots that evaluates the relevancy of an anchor text to the content of a given web site. The bottom line is for the anchor text and content to be highly congruent. This will ensure that your web page becomes highly weighted in the SERP rankings based on a given keyword query.

• PageRank and Backlinks

Backlinks are important when we deal with how to increase our performance in Google PageRank. SEOWatch conducted a study to determine exactly how important backlinks are when computing PageRank. They conclude that 67% of PageRank depends on backlinks. This tells us that serious link building efforts require a lot of investment in order to enhance the quantity as well as quality of backlinks to a website. There are several techniques in building backlinks – some are considered ethical, and some unethical.

• Get Them Naturally.

When we say ethical methods in link building, we mean that the link acquisitions are made naturally. Increasing awareness on how search engines operate has resulted to the increasing use of sneaky and manipulative designs by webmasters in order to influence their placements in the search engine rankings. Since search engine algorithms are designed to assign rankings in a democratic manner, tougher measures and quality requirements have been imposed to prevent other webmasters from using unethical methods to gain undue advantage over others. Using sneaky devices like link farms do not only get you penalized, they might get you banned entirely. Search engines look for natural inbound links, which are links that are built slowly over time. There are several techniques to build natural links. Link baiting and using high quality content in order to attract natural links your way are among the most effective ways to improve a site’s link popularity. Site owners can develop natural links by themselves or can hire a link building company to do it for them.

• Backlink Building Don’ts

There are several link building practices to avoid.

1. Link exchange. One of the don’ts in link building is link exchange. This operates as a barter exchange of links. If you put a link to their site, they put a backlink to your site. When involved in link exchanges, you must be wary of the ratio of your outbound and inbound links. If your outbound links outnumber your inbound links, this is a negative sign. Moreover, you must ensure that your link exchange partners are not link farms; if so, you may put your site at risk of being banned from search engines.
2. Suspicious links. Never link to suspicious sites. While search engines do not penalize you for having backlinks from such sites, engaging in a link exchange program with so-called “bad neighborhood” sites would destroy your link building efforts.
3. Acquiring quality backlinks are an important factor to consider in any link building campaign geared at improving search engine rankings and enhancing link popularity. However, it takes more than just backlinks to drive traffic to your site and influence your rankings. The most important thing is to develop a website with high quality content that is useful and relevant to the end user experience.

Link exchanges are an easy way of creating link popularity, defined as the quantity and quality of the inbound links pointing to your site. By swapping links with other site owners, you increase the potential targeted readership of your site, thereby giving it more exposure. Since getting noticed by the search engines require the quantity and relevancy of incoming links leading to your site, a link building campaign must incorporate link exchange as one of the methods used for gaining link popularity. However, like all off-page optimization strategies, there are pros and cons, and points to consider when leveraging the power of link exchange to boost your link popularity and search engine rankings.

What can be expected from link exchanges? A big advantage from link exchanges is highly targeted readership, a pivotal factor in building link popularity. By focusing on exchanges with relevant links or doing thematic exchanges with other sites, you can attract a large, quality and highly targeted traffic your way, increasing exposure for your web site. If you can get an authority website that enjoys huge traffic to link to your site, some of that traffic will undoubtedly come your way. Link exchange remains an important part of the link building process because it still is a leading factor in improving search engine placements. It is the easiest way to increase your site’s link popularity, which leads to higher traffic, and ultimately, a better position in the rankings.

What are the types of link exchanges? There are several forms of exchanging links: one-way, reciprocal, and three-way.

1. One-way link exchange. This is the most favorable type of link exchange that enhances link popularity because major search engines place great importance on inbound links when evaluating page rankings. When performing this type of link, the output link becomes: Mysite1 -> Mysite2
2. Reciprocal link exchange. This is a mutual link performed by two websites aimed at generating mutual traffic. Reciprocal links create permanent back links for partner sites. SEO experts typically frown at reciprocal links in general but recommend doing so-called relevant linking, which is a derivative of reciprocal linking that links only to relevant and quality sites. The Output Reciprocal link here is: Mysite1 <-> Mysite2
3. Three Way link exchange. This is a variation of reciprocal linking that is advantageous to all parties and attempts to replicate organic link building for the search engine rankings. The Output Three way link becomes: Mysite1-> Mysite2 -> Mysite3 -> Mysite1

Pointers for performing link exchanges: If done properly, link exchanges can deliver excellent results for your link building campaign. Here are a few pointers:

1. When exchanging links, always consider the Google mantra: “quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.” Delimit your exchanges to links that are relevant and high quality.
2. Stay away from link farms and link trading hubs or networks because the possibility of exchanging links with off-topic link partners will prove disastrous to your link popularity and your rankings.
3. Search for relevant websites on search engines. Use Yahoo or Google and search your targeted keyword/s. Target the sites on the upper part of the search results. Visit these pages and ask the owner to link to your site, but do not assume that everyone will say yes. If you succeed, you get inbound links from pages that rank well in the eyes of the search engines, a very advantageous thing for your link popularity. If simply asking for a link does not work, you can offer incentives such as commissions or free advertising.

Link exchange is the most popular method to acquire link popularity, but for large web-based promotional campaigns, exchanging links can be very tedious. Fortunately, you always have the option of hiring a link building company to handle your link exchanges or your link building campaign for that matter.