The ABCs of SEO link building

If you’re new to the world of web site development and traffic, one of the best ways to get your web site a high ranking with search engines is to build links – but be very careful about the links you choose. There are categories of links that will be more valuable to your site rankings and others that will even bring them down.

There are a few different types of links to consider and some general terms you need to know. The outbound links on your web site lead to other sites. Let’s say you’re writing an article on your webs site about applying for copyright protection. The outbound link is where you’ve linked from your site to the U.S. Copyright Office site where readers can get forms and other information. When someone links to your site from another web site that is an inbound link. For instance, you’ve written a favorable review of a theatrical event. The inbound link would be the theatre company linking to your site in order to publicize the review. The link to your web site’s home page or index page is a general link. A specific link goes to a particular posting or section on your site.

High-ranking sites are usually very well known sites and get high traffic flow, plus high search engine ranking. Microsoft, EBay and YouTube are good examples of highly ranked sites. Search engines like Yahoo, Google and Ask.com determine how sites are ranked based on algorithms. One of the main types of algorithms counts your inbound links (links to your site from another web site) and uses this to gauge your web site’s relevance or popularity with readers based on the search parameters.

Now it’s time to make a list of sites to build links to and hopefully get inbound links back. In order to increase your ranking, make links to sites that don’t fall under the category of heavy traffic. Facebook gets so much traffic that it probably won’t care that you’ve linked to its site, but the florist with the irises you mentioned in your article will probably appreciate it and reciprocate. You may want to post comments (and link) to various blogs in order to make your web site’s presence known, and you will also want to link to other web sites that publish content relevant to your own. In this instance, make sure you let the author or administrator know that he or she is receiving inbound links from you.