What is all this talk about Link Building? And what is it?

Link building is creating links to your website from other websites in order to establish and/or improve your rank with the search engines.

Link building is critical for the following reasons. 1) Direct Traffic: Links send direct traffic to your website that could convert into leads and clients. 2) Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Links are the key to getting your site ranked on the first page of the major search engines for your target keywords.

When you include links, make sure they’re “quality links” – a link that has a keyword phrase in the anchor text (the clickable part of the link).  Below “Internet Marketing Software” is the anchor text of the link and when someone does a search for “Internet Marketing Software” on one of the major search engines, we want this to come up high to gain more traffic.

Example of a good link: Internet Marketing Software.

Before you start, you need to know that the largest drawback with link building properly is TIME. Other than that, it’s fairly easy. If you don’t feel comfortable, you can always hire a professional to save time.

Sources I used:
1. seobook.com
2. hubspot.com
3. Talking to friends in the industry

Summary of top things I learned:
1) Link building is one of the most important factors in getting top placements on the major search engines.
2) For the foreseeable future, including links within your site is going to be the easiest way for a computer program/search engine to judge the importance and trustworthiness of a website.
3) Link building can be a simple yet very powerful website promotional tool.