Good Links vs. Bad Links

At this point, it’s pretty clear that you should not put all of your eggs into any one basket when it comes to internet marketing. What isn’t clear, regarding search engine optimization & marketing, is how to build links that help you instead of hurting you. To play it safe, most webmasters are just avoiding link building all together and that’s okay… except there is still a right way to build the good kind of backlinks.

The Best Links:

When you don’t even have to ask for it, and other websites naturally link back to your site. You can’t fake this, and you can’t pay for this, but you can earn it by publishing great content that relevant websites will link to as a resource. Original content that offers a fresh perspective on a unique topic or subject is the one and only way to appeal to bloggers and become a true authority figure.

Manual Link Building…

This is the most common type of link building strategy, and it involves reaching out to relevant website owners and asking them to link to your website. To be effective, you need to offer a good reason why they should link to you, and clearly you should only contact relevant website owners.

Creating your own links…

These links are not so good, because it falls in line with black hat strategies attempting to game the system. In short, self-created links carry almost no weight and may even backfire. Examples of what you should avoid include:

• Press releases with optimized anchor text
• Article directories
• Blog comments
• Guest post signatures
• Guestbooks
• Forum signatures
• Spam directories

The short version is that natural links are still a good thing, but it is counter-productive to attempt link building as a marketing campaign, Your best bet is to focus on being the best that you can be and letting others in your industry—or your customers—do the referring.