People that are relatively new to search engine optimization (SEO) often wonder what link building entails and why it matters for their website. Although there are many ways to accomplish link building, just knowing the basics will help you understand the importance of receiving and how to obtain links back to your website.

Consider a link as a vote towards your website for being relevant or popular on the Internet within a specific industry or niche. The more links you have from other websites, the more your website will benefit on search engines for specific user searches, while the likelihood of more traffic to your site increases.

For example, let’s say Website A and Website B are competing for the same consumers. Website A has a total of 10 links pointing back to their website while Website B has 100. Which website do you think search engines are going to “reward” more for its relevancy within their industry? Which website has the greater chance of having traffic go to their website because of exposure on the Internet?

Another important aspect is using specific keywords while link building, or in other words, utilizing anchor text as the link back to your website. Essentially, anchor text is the keyword/text of the link back to your website. Generally highlighted a different color and/or underlined, anchor text helps Internet users and search engines to understand what your website is relevant for.

Let’s suppose that Website A sold various types of baby blankets. If they wanted to rank highly in search engines for their product cotton baby blankets, it would be most helpful if they used “cotton baby blankets” as their anchor text for links back to their website. Doing this allows Internet searchers (if they stumbled upon that particular link) to have a good idea where that particular link would lead them. Also, the anchor text in this instance would help search engines to know more information about your website.

Of course, it’s always good to vary your anchor text (i.e., from our example, use “baby blankets,“ “100% cotton baby blankets,“ “organic baby blankets,“ “baby blanket store,“ etc.). There is a good chance that search engines may penalize your website if you solely use one phrase of anchor text for all of your links.

The following examples are different ways to receive some inbound links to your website:

• Directories allow you to list your website within a specific industry and/or genre, providing you with a link back to your website.

• Social bookmarking is a way for people to save and share websites of interest, categorizing the websites/links by tags.

• Writing an ezine article is a great way to utilize anchor text (keywords), but remember to write brand new, original content and follow the publisher’s terms of use.

Though link building by itself won’t guarantee top-ranking results (as you have to consider other factors like the age of your website, the website’s on-site content, etc.), creating a number of backlinks to your website will help improve its relevance on search engines and increase its opportunity for more traffic.

If you need help with building links or search engine optimization, please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.