Expert Link Building Techniques

One of the most important factors, of the many considered by
search engines in calculating your search ranking, is how well
your website or blog is linked to other sites. Almost nothing you
can do to improve your ratings will have as dramatic an effect as
increasing the number of these links. There are several simple
and inexpensive ways to improve the number and quality of the
sites linking to you. By concentrating on this one metric, you
can have an amazing impact on how well your site does in a search
for a particular keyword. 

The simplest thing you can do to improve this link count is to
start visiting other blogs and websites that have to do with the
keyword you care about. By visiting these sites, you have the
chance to comment on posts and leave a link back to your site.

These all add up over time to help improve your link count. 
You could also start your own blog, or even a group of blogs
related to keywords you care about and link these back to your
site as well. Be sure to add appropriate links on these blogs to
your site to help build additional links to specific areas of
your main site. This will encourage visits by people that read
your blog and you may get additional links from them as well. 

Submitting your site to website directories is another good idea
for helping to boost your link count. These directories will
naturally link to your site and can help direct traffic your way
as well as raise your sites ranking. The thing to remember with
site directories is to submit to a few each week and not to do
them all at the same time. Some search engines will punish your
ranking if you suddenly appear in a lot of directories at once.
Also, the ranking of the directories you submit to can impact
your ranking as the search engines give more credence to sites
with a higher ranking and will raise your ranking accordingly. 

Writing articles that your publish on your blog, or on your
website is another great way to build additional links. You could
submit these articles to other blogs for additional exposure as
well. Each of the articles you write should have both your name,
the name of your website, and a hard link back to your site. Most
blogs that accept submissions will publish them with this
information intact and help you build even more links back to
your site. 

A recent phenomenon is the availability of sites with good search
engine rankings that are willing to sell you links on their site
back to your site. These sites will give you an immediate and
dramatic boost in your rankings for a keyword based on the link
they provide back to you as a trusted site, it's like they are
vouching for you. Be cautious with this as some search engines
are aware of this and will punish you if you use it too often. 
Another thing a lot of good webmasters do to help raise the
ranking of their sites is to visit and participate in some social
networking sites on the web. These sites allow you to submit
content from your site and comment on posts or articles they
publish and also allow you to post your name and a link back to
your site. This helps them with traffic, and helps you with
another source of links and traffic. 

The final approach you can take is to find other websites and
blogs that center on your main keyword or topic and see if you
can trade links with them. This is a fairly common practice and
really helps raise the ranking of both sites involved in the
trade. You might be surprised to find how accommodating a lot of
the folks that run these sites can be. Most of them are more than
willing to trade links with you and may even be willing to trade
content as well. 

Applying these techniques to your sites will certainly help their
rankings with the search engines. The number and quality of the
links back to your site by others is a very important factor in
determining your search engine ranking. By spending a little time
and effort, you can improve it dramatically.