I am sure you have heard a million times that one of the most important aspects of any SEO program is link building and developing a lot of good quality links into your pages. This is very true. However, it is a two way street. To get links coming in, you have to have some links going out.

Link building has become one of the most talked about subjects lately. Whether it is bought links, link exchanging or link farming, everyone seems to be writing about the subject. One of the reasons is undoubtedly Google’s crack down on ‘un-natural’ links and the possible sale or trade of PageRank.

However, to get links coming in, you have to be prepared to link out. Having said that, the links leaving your site need to be selective. The links needs to offer one of two benefits, preferably both.

• Provide a useful link for your visitor: the page you are linking to should relate to your contents and add value to your visitors experience on your page
• Link to a colleague in your social network: as you develop relationships within any of the social environments, providing links to their pages will, overtime, encourage them to link back, particularly if you have content that worthy of being linked (see the first point from their angle)

As you develop these relationships, you can develop link building strategies that include links leaving your site. One mistake can be to link to the ‘big guys’ or those with a bit following. As they have a big following, they can not link back to everyone. Be a little selective. Link to some of the more popular sites but also learn to identify some of the newer sites that obvious have that little something that may make them succeed.

Link building with these guys now and get links back from them. Over time, if they do succeed, you can ride on the back of their success through the early link juice. Image if you had links coming from Andy Beale from the earlier days. The key is to identify those sites that are going to become popular.

One final note, their are many thousands of sites that have good page rank yet they are not socially active, they are not linked to in droves and who may be ripe for a little social networking. Link building can be a part of your social marketing and it can bring a lot of value to your site over time.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Link Building, Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.