SEO Success: The 10 Commandments of Link Building - page 4

by Brandon Cornett, 8/10/2007

8. Thou shalt track thine own progress.

If you put a lot of energy into your SEO program, you need to be able to track your progress. There are business reasons for this. But more importantly, there are morale reasons for it. You want to feel good about what you're doing, right? You want to see some positive results to justify your hard work, don't you? Of course you do. So keep track of your link-building progress the same way you keep track of your traffic and rankings.

There are a number of tools online that can help you identify links from other websites to yours. Yahoo Site Explorer is my favorite. You can use Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) to quickly and easily find out which websites are linking to yours. You can also export this information into a spreadsheet for further use. Nice, huh?

9. Thou shalt keep the big picture in mind.

Yes, links are a big part of your website's visibility. But there's a lot more to SEO than links. In fact, let's look at the bigger picture and say there's a lot more to online success than gaining links. If you tend to get carried away with certain tasks, like I do, then schedule your SEO efforts to avoid focusing only one thing. Set aside some time for link-building, article writing, website improvement, product development, etc.

In other words, don't adopt "SEO tunnel vision" to the point you neglect your website's primary offering (whether that be products, services, content, or a combination of the three).

10. Thou shalt enjoy aging well.

One of the things I live about SEO is that it gets easier as you go. When you put the right fundamentals in place up front, you'll be able to increase and/or maintain your visibility with less effort over time. Most search engines -- and especially Google -- place a lot of emphasis on the age of your domain, your individual web pages, and the links coming into those web pages. Like a good wine, links get better with age.

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About the author

Copyright 2006, Brandon Cornett. Brandon Cornett is the author of the "Agent's Guide to Search Engine Visibility," available for immediate download at ArmingYourFarming.com. Learn to practice real estate search engine optimization the right way. Download your guide today at: http://www.armingyourfarming.com/search

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