Best Practices For Link Building

Whichever side of the link-building formula you're working on-making links or getting linked-there are a lot of opinions and approaches. One old saying is that the "best" links are made the "natural" or "old fashioned" way. What that means is that webmasters and content editors naturally want to post links to, and get links from, sites with valuable, usable, high quality content.

That is what they hope and aim for. The reality of the situation is that it is not always easy to do the ideal. It is likely that most linking gets done in a way more accurately described as "semi-clever" and "looking out for #1" than "natural." Though many people are manipulating links, the fact still remains that Content Is King. Frankly, some of the energy and resources that go into link manipulation could be better spent on creating or buying some excellent content.

Edutainment works

Plenty of the SEO techniques in use today can help a site achieve higher rankings for keywords. The problem is in the effective timeframe- "goosing your stats" with technical and code tweaks doesn't last long and therefore requires constant effort and re-creation of the wheel. Good content has tremendous staying (rather, "sticking") power, not only on its original site but as it spreads like kudzu across the web. This is where your efforts should start, with the content. This is what matters to users, often without them even realizing it. The bottom line - to create powerful links, you need great content on your site so people will want to link to you, and you need to deploy relevant content on other sites to link back to your site.

Most Internet users are not picky about where the content comes from as long as they find it useful, entertaining or educational. Edutainment works. Conversely, and wrongly, webmasters and site promoters have not been that picky about the quality of their content and the best avenues for spreading their web kudzu. (We might just start a new buzzword here.) Some feel the need to sign up for every new social network and every twittering, flickering new tool. That is easy to do, as it saves time compared to thinking things through. When that new social network is abandoned by all but the few die-hards, you discover that they really weren't the essential link-builders you thought they were.

Make link waves into tsunamis

The lesson is a pretty basic one, which means it will have to be learned anew by every generation. There will always be the next big thing, the bigger breadbox, the hipper and slicker and cooler network, but few of them on their own will ever be a make-or-break addition to your link building strategy. Don't forget the overall strategy is simple, just one lone bullet point on the PowerPoint presentation in your mind-and it says, "Content."

To come full circle and reiterate the lesson about chasing all the new social networks, the fact is that you don't have to understand completely how to land links from all the "in" social networks or communication tools du jour. Concentrate on the established ones (Facebook, del.ici.ous, Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter) and the most promising newcomers (Twitter-ish tools like Sweetter and Yonkly) and then knuckle down to some hard work-or hire someone to do it. Either way, it's time to get those link waves going, so start thinking "tsunami" when you think "content."

Be a "naturalizer"

With all the foregoing in mind, analyze your site's pages and identify what is good, what is popular and what is visible. With the rest, modify, revise, replace or update it. Whatever you determine is currently working for you, or has other earmarks of quality like good feedback, well made multimedia or slick interactivity, take that content to a prominent position and link to it from everywhere you can.

It may be that you have a decent amount of content after this exercise in quality control, or it may be that there is less quality content on your site than you thought. At least it's not hard to figure out what to do! If you are lacking content, build it or buy it. Do it with high quality in mind, do it steadily and consistently, and do it in a "natural" manner that will hopefully harness other natural forces at work on the Internet. You are not the only "naturalizer" out there.

If your content sparkles and shines, and you've done a nuanced SEO job with your work, you've created a good beginning. This is the way to get that natural linking started, that wave that can be driven to gale force (you hope). Now the proactive link building you do-socializing, commenting, posting, soliciting-will be more productive, since everyone who is paying attention (and that's the subject of another whole article) will now find great value in the quality content you are freely providing. There's nothing more natural than cream rising to the top, so aim to be the cream of the crop.

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