Let's Start With Back Links
These are links from other websites directed back to your website. One of the ways that Google and other search engines learn to love your website is by how many other website owners consider a link to your site worthwhile.
The key is not the quantity of back links from other websites, but the quality of the back links. For quality back links, the sites linking to yours need to be relevant. It's all a game of relevancy and is essential for the success of your website and marketing efforts.
Search engines calculate keyword relevancy based on the percentage of related content found at either end of the link. If content is not related, it will not be considered important and you will lose page rank or be totally ignored by Google's army of spiders.
There are various ways to accomplish this balancing act and stay out of SEO trouble while you're doing it. Many Webmasters have been banished to Google hell for manipulating links to get higher ranking.
Rule: Do Not Get Involved With Link Farms
Link farms are collections of interlinked pages designed to fool search engines into believing that pages are more important than they are. Google is known to use special methods, which penalize link farm sites.
Rule: Stay Out Of Google's "Bad Neighborhoods."
Back links are great ways to get visitors to your website, and one good way to attract attention with the resulting free traffic is with reciprocal link exchanges.
Once again those links need to be quality links from other sites, with content or focus similar to yours. Always check out link-mates and avoid any with too many pages full of unrelated links and links to "Bad neighborhoods."
Google will devalue or ignore a site because of the bad company it keeps or the bad neighborhood it hangs out in, and if your site is linked to it, it can get devalued, dropped in rank, or worse; ignored by the robots completely.
What Makes A "Bad Neighborhood?"
Well, sites that use black-hat methodology to drive traffic for one thing. One of the most predominant black-hat procedures in use is commonly referred to as "cloaking." This is the act of presenting different content to the search engine than to users. Avoid those kinds of tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
A good test of content is asking the question: "Does this help my users?" or "Would I do this if search engines did not exist?" Also, sites with page after page of outbound links are not good link buddies.
What really makes Google have fits are those pages that you see with no content but are just storage sites for thousands of poor quality links.
Sites that use clandestine Java Script redirects, large sets of poor quality doorway pages, hidden text or hidden links, and pages loaded with irrelevant keywords are all undesirable link companions that can result in your site being devalued or ignored.
Rule: Stay Vigilant
Do good research and be constantly vigilant to make sure you don't become linked to a bad neighborhood. Inbound links cannot be controlled, however Google will cause you to suffer for linking to the bad boys.
There are free tools available for uncovering sites harmful to your link building efforts. Just go to you-know-who and search with the term "bad neighborhood"
(in quotation marks) and you'll find them.
There are certain industries that are notorious for being involved with using spam and link-farming techniques. Two major offenders in this field are the Pharmaceutical and Adult Industries. Unless your business is in some aspect of those two industries, you would do well to avoid them entirely.
While inbound links are good to have, quality outbound links to other high quality or authority sites definitely will help your rankings considerably.
Remember that in order for those outbound links to matter, they have to be within the subject field of your site. Consider these things when you are trying to get traffic and a decent Page Rank for your websites.
It is vital for you to keep good track of which sites are linking back to you. If all the links are outbound from your site and not reciprocated with a link back, the sites on the other end of your outbound links will get the traffic and page rank, leaving you being considered an unimportant website.
If you would like to find several valuable resources for verifying your reciprocal links, just search that term and you will find some great tools available.
Another major contributor to your Internet marketing success is the content of the anchor text of the Back-link (what the link actually says on your site) and how it is using, or not using, the keywords relevant to your site.
A good example: "Click Here" is totally generic and does not actually relate to your website. However the phrase "For a great way to make money online, visit our site," uses your keyword phrase, "make money online" in the hyper-linked anchor text. Search engines love this.
To generate quality links for your sites, you have to know your audience and whom you want to attract. Target your audience and focus your link building efforts on sites within that audience.
When looking for link possibilities, build your directory of sites with themes that complement your site. They need not be identical to yours, but they need to be related in content.
For example if your site is about collecting old fishing lures, a site providing tips on pricing and preserving old fishing lures would be a valuable link, and most of the keywords would be somewhat the same.
A highly beneficial way to find website possibilities for reciprocal linking is via search engines to find the top sites with the same keywords you use. Use several engines and search using your own site's keywords. The sites that come up in the first few places (after the highlighted paid slots) are websites considered important and they have been ranked accordingly. Visit those sites and contact the webmasters for a link.
You will find that the more competitive sites will decline, but don't take that personally. But some will also accept, especially when you offer a link back to them. When that happens you have just added a quality back link to boost your value with the search engines.
Be Cautious
At times you will get offers for a link trade with sites telling you they've put one of your links on their page, and wanting you to reciprocate. Be sure you check that out. If they get a link from you and do not have one back to your site on their links page they are only harvesting your traffic, with no return.
Make sure they have a link on their home page to their link pages also and if they don't, decline the invitation. Google does not spider the link page, and that link would be totally worthless to you.
Rule: Do Not Link To Pages With A Zero Page Rank.
That link will not aid your page rank, and you could be linking to a bad neighborhood or website that has been banned.
Avoid linking to sites that have multiple link pages crammed full of links of all types. Remember the discussion about link farms and you'll recognize it for what it is.
Building A Link Page
Build a link page on your website that gives other webmasters permission to link to yours. Make it super easy for them to do it. Make everything they will need easy to find and right at their fingertips.
Offer several choices for links and make sure there is good separation between them so it's easy to see where one ends and another begins. Also make sure there is a link on the homepage to the links page.
Provide HTML code for your link so they can just copy and paste it on their link page. And before you post the code on your link page for the webmasters to access make sure the URL is correct.
Double-check everything! How would you feel if you published an incorrect link for your own website? I've done it before, and believe me; it's not pretty.
Make sure your keywords are in the linking HTML code. These give your link an extra punch. The search engines pick up the keywords for people searching those phrases, making your link more important to the spiders.
Some Webmasters prefer graphic links. Small colorful banners or buttons hyper-linked to your site are terrific attention-getters make your links stand out in the crowd.
Make absolutely sure to add the HTML "Alt" tag to your graphic link, as search engine spiders do not recognize graphics. They only read tags, so information located will allow the spider to index it.
Do not go overboard with the graphics; be tasteful; a colorful button or small banner is all that's needed. Also put a description with each link on your links page. It's much more professional looking this way and your page will look less like a link farm to the spiders.
The indexing spiders check your links for value and legitimacy and if you have links going out to undesirable places you will be slapped down by the search engines with their "birds of a feather philosophy."
Again, make sure you have a link to your link pages on your home page and any other pages you have on your website so your visitors and the search engines can find it easily.
Contact
Okay, now that we have a good-looking link page, let's examine how to ask for links on other Webmaster's pages.
Before any contacts are made or attempted, use your own keywords and find other sites with good page rank and similar content not directly competing with your page. Visit the page and consider how a link to your page would be a welcome resource for that page's visitors.
A Webmaster will be much more likely to be interested in having your link when they discover you have taken time to visit their page and found benefits your link would add to their site.
If you can, when initiating contact, use the telephone. A personal call to another Webmaster is more likely to get consideration than e-mail from out of the blue. Introduce yourself and tell them you've visited their site and what you liked and found interesting and that you would be interested in setting up a link exchange.
If calling is impossible, compose a well-worded and respectful e-mail and mention some things about the site that you liked and how your link could enhance their visitor's experience. This is much better than just asking for a link without showing the mutual benefits, which link swapping would bring, and shows them you have taken the time to visit their site.
By now you should have some good techniques for successful link building which will generate convertible traffic flow and spread news of your website across the web, cost free.
For you newcomers I hope this article has been helpful in steering you towards becoming successful at one of the many free methods available to you for driving quality traffic to your website.
In the meantime thank you, and may Good Fortune find us all.