After talking to a digital marketing agency in the past few weeks, I realised that while the basic principles of link building still apply, it was worth revisiting some of the elements that form a link building strategy.
Page rank still matters
Despite talks about Google dropping the page rank from its toolbar, regular updates are still being pushed, and it remains a very good tool to assess the quality of a website. So if you want to increase your link popularity, make sure you target sites with a high page rank and authority as it will definitely have an impact.
An analysis of the competitors of the PayPoint.net Online Payments website clearly displayed some very highly ranked sites, even though they were not necessarily relevant to the industry in question. So when looking at links, try getting some from top websites such as google, facebook, the bbc... This is obviously easier said than done, but it is well worth the effort. Most the these sites with high page rank will have blogs and forums where you can post and potentially add a link to your own site, so try it.
Website relevance
It is of course very important to target wesbites which are relevant to your business or somehow related to what you do, but it appears that Google's policy on relevance is somehow flawed as authority will sometimes play a more important role than relevance itself. Of course you should always aim to get links from a respected and relevant website, but sometimes PageRank alone can bring better results.
Anchor text
This rule hasn't changed recently, but I thought it was worth a quick reminder. When building links on websites, make sure to use anchor text rather that just your company name, logo or the traditional "click here". Choose the keywords you want to rank for and use them in the text of your links, and for even better results, link these keywords to specific pages of your site updated for them.
Where to get links from
- Your customers / partners
- Online directories
- Blogs / Forums
- Social media sites
- Articles submissions websites
- Link baiting (write link worthy articles and publish them on your website)
- Press releases
- Link exchange / reciprocal linking
This list is probably not exhaustive but it should form the basis of your link building strategy.
So for the best results, target websites relevant to your activity, with a high page rank and that will accept to put links containing your own keywords. As Aleksandr himself would put it, Simples! Enjoy your sunday.