White Hat Link Building Course (The Basics, Factors To Consider And Methods Of Link Building) 2020

 

Link Building Mini Course - Part One: The Basics

In this mini course I will outline and explain the most common linkbuilding techniques, as well as reveal some secret tips and tricks about linkbuilding.

Before learning about linkbuilding you must have some general knowledge of internet/website marketing and promotion. This includes a introduction to search engine optimization or SEO.

Let us start by explaining the difference between promotion and marketing. Ordinarily the word "promotion" is everything that is done to help sell a product or service. So technically speaking "everything" includes presentation materials or tricks that a sales person uses during a television commercial or a sales call or even a news paper ad that trys to get a person to think favorably about what is being advertised. The word advertising technically means the physical or virtual "print" or "space" that is a news paper or magazine ad, internet advertising, radio and tv commercials, direct mail or email and other direct response activities. Advertising also includes catalogs and billboards, as well as publicity and public relations. The word "promotion" takes care of all the loose ends. So you can see why often these words are used interchangeably, and can often be used to describe the same thing. We will get back to this a bit later.

Now an introduction to Search Engine Optimization. Generally speaking, this term is used to describe any trick or technique applied to a website in order for it to achieve a high placement or "ranking" in the search engine results. In the world of websites there is really only 3 search engines you need to worry about. They are, Google, Yahoo and Bing. These 3 search engines account for 95% of searches on the net.

Back to achieving those "high rankings". A high ranking is basically having a page or multiple pages of a website displayed as one of the top 10 or 20 pages for a specific search phrase. There is more than 1 billion searches a day on google alone. Probably 2 1/2 billion if you count all 3 search engines. 2 and 1/2 BILLION! You can assume that there are certain words that are being searched for more than others. SEO allows a website to rank better than other sites for a certain phrase. If a word is searched 350 million times a month and your website shows on the first page in the search engines for that phrase, you can expect to see at least 50% of those people come to your website. If I had a business, id like to have 175 million people visit my website every month.

But SEO isn't all glamorous, the reason being is because of the number of websites that compete for these search results. 6-10 billion pages in google alone, probably over 20 billion between the top 3 search engines. This only accounts for the pages that are indexed (listed) (Indexed means that the search engine has visited a website and displayed its pages as search results).

There are probably BILLION's of webpages awaiting to be indexed in search engines every month. That's serious competition. That's why proper SEO is basically the single most important factor of any online business. Good search results = traffic and traffic = money.

There is another important part of SEO. That is getting the search engines to "crawl or spider" a webpage quickly and efficiently. This is essential for fast search result listing. Basically you need to reverse engineer how the search engines decide on website rank, placement, etc. The search engines decide on these things with an EXTREMELY complicated formula that they spend billions of dollars every year making more and more complex and efficient, and also protecting it and keeping it secret. Since it is constantly changing and very secret, SEO experts are constantly adapting to the changes but have to resort to basing techniques on theory alone... as a result of this, there is often major discrepancies among the SEO community.

One of the single most influential factors a website can have is backlinks. A backlink is defined as a hyper text link pointing to a specific webpage (the webpage that you are promoting). A quality backlink will help the search engines find a webpage and begin to crawl and index it. It is also an important factor that the search engines use to determine the "weight" of a webpage/site. Webpage "weight" is calculated mostly on how many relevant backlinks a site has and the quality of the content. This is where the job of a "linkbuilder" takes place. Linkbuilding is basically a very strong online marketing and promotion technique. It is vital for the success of a website. Therefor a linkbuilder is a very important asset to an online business. Many times a independent internet business cannot handle linkbuilding, as there are many other parts of the business he/she needs to take care of. This is why many independent businesses and even large business outsource linkbuilding. Since it is extremely important, often they are willing to pay a good wage to anyone who wishes to do it.

So now you should have an idea why an online business would need a linkbuilder. As a linkbuilder you are technically an Internet Advertising and Promotion Assistant. As a link builder you can be promoting a single site or multiple sites depending on the companies specific needs.

Link Building Mini Course - Part Two: Factors To Consider

Linkbuilding can be done in many different ways. Some are more effective than others. The different types of backlinks a linkbuilder can get can be good and bad. I will explain later how to identify a good link from a bad link. As I will also lay out tips and tricks for efficient link building.

 

Backlink Factors To Consider:

There are many factors to look at when attaining links pointing to a site. Truth be told; "not all links are created equally". 

 - Relevancy

Probably one of the most important factors is site relevancy. A link from a site that is related to the site you are promoting is better then a site that is unrelated. Also, a link from a site with a similar theme is also better then a completely unrelated site. So if you want to prioritize link building, try to get links on sites with themes related to the site you are promoting. So for instance, if your site is on "air purifiers", a link from another air purifier site would be much better then a link from a site on "car parts".

 

- Authority Sites

Every site on the internet has what I call an "authority score". This is simply the amount of weight the site has within the search engines. An authority score is based on the number of links pointing to a particular site, and the weight of each of those links. There is no real way to determine an authority score, and only Google provides something of the sort. You may be familiar with Googles Pagerank (at least I hope so), if not, no worries. Pagerank is a number derived by Googles algorithms which represents there opinion on how much "authority" that particular site has. Generally, the higher the PR (pagerank) is, the higher the "authority score", and the better rankings the site will achieve. However, PR or an "authority score" is only used as one factor when considering where to rank a web page in the SERPS (search engine result pages). There are 100's of factors that search engines to take in place, so the PR or authority score is not a direct measure of a sites importance or rankings.

Some sites are also considered "authority sites" by the search engines. These are generally monstrous sites like Amazon.com, Dmoz.org, About.com, CNN.com etc. Most big newspapers are also considered "authority sites". All this means, is that content and links within these sites are given more importance then usual. So, getting a link on one or more "authority sites" is beneficial to you as it is generally worth the most link points. Sites that end in .edu are also generally given more importance in the search engines.

To get an idea of how much "authority" a site has in the search engines, you can check their backlinks. If the site has thousands upon thousands of backlinks from related sites, that have accrued over time, it will probably have a high "authority score". On the other hand, if a site has only a few backlinks, it may be new, and not have much weight at all in the search engines. With that said, even sites with little authority can be beneficial.

 

- Link Farms

It is a good idea to avoid sites with hundreds of outbound links. These sites may be seen as link farms by the search engines, and your site could be penalized, or the link just not considered. Either way, it is a waste of time. Generally the rule of thumb is you don't want more then 50 outbound links on one page, though some say even lower, around 25.

- Banned Sites

You should try to avoid sites that have been banned, or are unindexed in one or more of the search engines. To check, use a site saturation checker. If there are 0 pages indexed in one or more of the search engines, the site is unlikely to be beneficial to you.

- Link Placement

Links placed within content are generally given more importance then links in menu's, or at the bottom of the page. For instance, it is more natural to the search engines to see a phrase within a paragraph that is linked to a related site, then a link that appears after all the content at the bottom of a page. Linking within the content of a page is called "linking within context", and is considered the most natural form of linking.

- Anchor Text

The anchor text of your link pointing to your site is an important factor search engines use when determining the rank of a site. An anchor text is simply the text that is highlighted in the link to your site. For example; "Vast Online Traffic", in this case, "Vast Online Traffic" is the anchor text for the link. The anchor text's you use when linking to your site should contain terms directly related to your site. If your site is based on "air purifiers", you might use "air purifiers", "quality air purifiers", "air purification", "clean air" or "air filters" etc. as anchor texts when linking to it. It is a good idea to vary your anchor text while still focusing on the main theme of the site you are promoting. If a search engine encounters hundreds of links pointing to your site all with the same anchor text, it is likely to raise a red flag.

Not only is it important to vary your anchor texts, it's also important to vary the pages you are linking too. Afterall, you have more then one page on the site you are promoting, so why shouldn't you link to more then one page. The basic idea is to mix up your links between the homepage, sitemap (if there is one) and the actual content pages. Linking to pages other then the index page is known as "deep linking". By varying the pages you link to, you also avoid "red flags" by the search engines, which could result in being penalized. Therefore, remember, vary your anchors, and vary the pages you link to in order to be efficient.

 

Link Building Mini Course - Part Three: Link Building

 

Methods Of Attaining Backlinks

Well now you know what makes a good link, so let's go over the methods available for getting links to your site that you have decided to promote. There are many, and each comes with its own positive and negative attributes. Generally speaking, the more links you get to the sites you are promoting, and the higher the quality of the links, the more benefit to you.

 

- Homepage/Subpage Links (A link featured on a website)

The best way of getting this type of link is email submission. It is extremely hard to get a website to give you a link without getting something in return... such as money or a reciprocal or three-way link (as mentioned above). 

- Articles

This option is only available to Advanced linkbuilders. It is basically writing a "fresh" chunk of content on a topic that relates to the site you are trying to promote. The article is generally between 250-500 words long and is submitted to 1 or more article syndicated websites.

 

- Link Directories

This type of link is obtained by searching for a relevant "link directory", browsing the topics and submitting the link of the site you are promoting for approval. This typically takes 3 days to 3 months to actually get the link accepted and displayed. It is also one of the easiest types of link building. You don't lose any points if your submission is rejected, so power of numbers is the way to make sure you make money in the future from this method.

- Forums

Find a forum related to the topic of the website you are promoting. Sign up and edit your signature in your profile. Edit it to any of the sites you wish to promote (You can put up to 4 links in your signature with most forums). Now you go back to the forum and post a question or answer some one else's question. When you make a post, your signature will be connected, which will contain your promoted link. You can also place a link directly in your context.




I hope you have benefited from this mini-course.
'Comments' and 'Shares' are always welcome. :-)

To your success,
Jonny T