Link Building and Popularity

Originally, search engines relied on "on-page" factors. What keywords are in your text, how often it appears, what headers and meta tags say.

It took about two weeks before the first SEO firms realized you can easily game a search engine which relied only on page content, adding dozens of pages of nonsense which had the right content ratios.

The breakthrough happened with the development of Google, and most notably, PageRank. This technology considers a link to a page a vote for the quality of the page. In addition, links are themselves weighted by the referring site's value. If you're linked on page 1 of CNN, you'll probably be given way more credit than on Page 96 of Bob's Blog's Links Directory.

The PageRank concept works so well that now all major search engines perform some link-based weighting to rank results.

Better Quality Links

However, it's not just creating a bunch of links which all say "click here to visit MySite.org" In linkbuilding, as in all SEO, the goal is to present a site that has the feel of a real resource to a visitor. In particular, you want to avoid looking like you're buying your way to the top. Search engines love to penalize sites involved in link-selling schemes, and in turn, the pages they link to lose the ranking power they tried to buy.

Most sites don't go from zero to 5,000 inbound links in a week. They also don't have every single link with the exact same keyword, or even on the same portion of the page. While it may not be obvious to you, Google can mathematically see if a site's profile resembles one which buys links.

Also, consider where the links are going. You don't necessarily want to concentrate every link at the home page. Instead, target specific links at specific markets- if you sell car parts, put a link to the Hyundai section on a Hyundai owner's forum. Deeper links will benefit search engine results, by allowing a more exact match to the visitor's needs, and increase the sales rate once a visitor arrives. In addition, a diversity of links provides an additional feel of legitimacy and natural content.

How to Increase Your Back-Links

Web-Op provides a variety of link-building services to meet the needs of your site:

ONE-WAY, TEXT LINK BUILDING. We don't mess around with "reciprocal" links or directories of no importance. Instead, Web-Op's global link-building teams scour the web for sites which will accept a link that fits our needs. We have a powerful database of pre-screened, constantly monitored sites to work with.
Read our full article on smart link building
SOCIAL MEDIA OPTIMIZATION. You can get your site promoted on services like digg.com and del.icio.us, or even by marketing on Twitter. Social Media traffic typically doesn't convert well, but can provide an excellent surge in traffic and inbound links to a new product or story.
Learn More about Digg and Del.icio.us
PRESS RELEASE MANAGEMENT. Web-Op can distribute press-releases with embedded links through a network of media contacts. When the media sources post these releases, it's a relevant site, featuring a link to yours-- a perfectly controlled link.
REPUTATION MANAGEMENT. A specialized part of link-building is reputation management. In some businesses, it becomes important not just to control your own rankings, but to keep tight reins on the rankings of related sites. By owning all ten top results with properties you own, or at least show you favorably, negative or libelous information stays away from customers researching your firm. Reputation management incorporates strategic link-building with building "owned" resources, ranging from social media accounts to secondary websites, to keep your company's search looking good. Try searching your company's name, and see what comes back. If you've got some angry customer blog, or a nasty news item, get reputation management. Also see
APX Alarm: A case study in managing your online image.

Call 480-664-9570 to learn more about our Phoenix, AZ area based link-building services.