SEO Success: The 10 Commandments of Link Building

by Brandon Cornett, 8/10/2007

Links today are what keywords were several years ago -- the hottest topic in SEO. Search engines, particularly Google, use link popularity to help evaluate and rank your website. Link popularity refers to the number, quality and relevance of inbound links from other websites to yours.

Some people waste a lot of time seeking links in the wrong way and from the wrong places. The "10 Commandments of Link Building" will help you avoid such time-wasters and achieve true linking success.

1. Thou shalt recognize the value of links.

For now, and for the foreseeable future, link building and SEO walk hand-in-hand. Linking profiles are one of Google's top ranking factors, and the "other" engines use them as well. Once upon a time, you could simply write a lot of keyword-rich content and rank well for it. While that may still be the case with MSN / Live Search, it no longer carries you very far with Yahoo or Google. That's where links come in.

2. Thou shalt begin link-building on thine own website.

"What is this heresy? Link-building starts on my website? Who ever heard of such a thing?" All too often, I see website owners throw up a new site and go out hunting for links before they have a site worth linking to. Link building always starts on your own website.

Think about it for a moment. Aside from directories and paid listings, few people will link to a bare-bones website that offers nothing unique, helpful or interesting. If you start hunting for links before your website has earned its place on the web, you're going to have a long, hard time of it.

On the other hand, if you build the kind of website that makes others in your industry or niche say, "Wow, that's really something! I know some folks who would like that," then your link-building efforts will be a breeze. It all starts with what you put into your website.

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