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If you have ever read about SEO & SEM then you probably heard of, link building. What is link building? Well one way to classify link building is to know it the process of creating inbound links to ones own website. What does this do? Strategic link building will help establish your website in the competitive rankings of search listings. It is one way that helps you get your website to the top of the first page of Google, and other search engine directories. It is easy to do, EVERYONE can do it themselves.

It’s like a popularity game. Voting for your favor. You want the most inbound links coming to your site. Search engine optimization (SEO) can be considered a cost-effective marketing tool for improving your visibility of your website and inbound linking is one of the most important factors of directing traffic to your website.

Get a feel for the benefits of link building:

• You will open up greater opportunities of viewers visiting your site when you have more inbound links linking to you.
• When you have high quality, incoming links your site will gain trust and be seen as a valuable resource.
• Get higher rankings = more traffic = more conversions. Have good inbound links go to you to make it seem like you have content of value.

To be successful in this type of marketing you want to have quality inbound links. It needs to relate to make sense and hold value. Necessarily, you would not want to have a link from food recipe website when your business and website is all about law. There is no sense into that, and it does not match up. So lets take a look at what you can do yourself, or what are some of the ways to build up links:

Directories - The first thing you can do is search for directories that have categories of different industries. When you first enter the directory website you want to search for the category you want to place yourself in. It is like placing yourself in the Yellow Pages’ book. Where would you be? Auto? Computers? Real Estate? Every directory is different and will have deep structuring. Make sure you find the best category that fits your business. After you find a category you will want to find a “submit url” or “submit site” link/button so you can submit your information. Normally, it will ask you your website’s title, address, a description, keywords, and email. This is where you can see the value as you list your description and keywords. Here at iLL FX Designs, we would focus on keywords and phrases like, “Charleston Web Design”, in our title and description information.  There are paid submissions and free submissions. For a cost-effective strategy you will want to stick with free submissions. Look up on Google, “free directory submissions” and you’ll pull up a list of directories you can submit to for free. To note,  paid submissions are quality links, and will get you listed faster than free submissions. Now there are free url submissions with reciprocal linking. This is totally up to you, but you will see what it’s all about. Mainly, the directory will want you to place a link of theirs on your site. There are supporters and non-supporters of this method, but you decide. One of the first directory sites you can submit to on your own is www.DMOZ.org.

Business and Local Linking - Some state and city websites will have their own directories. As long as they can let you provide your website link you will be golden.  Check out your chamber of commerce to see if they provide such service.

Community Sites - Such as Craigslist, Google Groups and Yahoo! Answers. These types of sites can allow you to present your URL address in some way. Participate. Viral marketing is a great way to utilize these types of sites for link building.

Blog and Forum Posting - Find quality blogs that relate to your industry and post comments or replies. This is a very popular method used by a lot of link builders. When you are more active in posting on other blogs and forums the more traffic you can get.

Article Submissions - This is one of the best viral recommendations. You can submit your articles to such sites as ArticleAvenue.com or ArticleCity.com. You can submit your article and in a few days or weeks you can receive a good amount of backlinks, and it just keeps on going. All you have to do is submit one GOOD article to get a VERY EFFECTIVE response. Remember to have it relate to your industry or website. Your article will reach out to thousands and seem more of a personal promotion. Less time consuming and easier than you think.

When link building just keep in mind:

• There are thousands, maybe millions of sites that will post your link for free
• Related, popular sites that pertain to your industry and/or website are better to have inbound links on than ordinary links
• It is all about quantity and quality of the backlinks
• Develop more one-way links than reciprocal
• Keep you strategy constant. If you submit to directories twice a day, then do it twice a day because spamming can hurt you
• Your competition can be doing the same thing. See how many links they have through sites like website.grader.com are useful (this site can grade your own website and find any issues)

If you start practicing and participating you will realize the the value of link building. It is cheaper, and in the end it could turn into FREE ADVERTISING online.  The most costly expense of it is TIME, so if you don’t have time to do it then contact a professional who can assist and help.