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Link Building in Online Marketing: Tougher Than It Sounds
By Paul Marshall (c) 2010 Strategic Web Marketing Net
(http://strategicwebmarketing.net/)

You probably don't need to read the latest advice from the
online marketing consultants to figure out the basic idea behind
link building. Without links, your site won't develop authority.
Without authority, it won't move up on the search engines. But
even the most savvy online marketing consultant would have to
admit that doing that is just not as easy as it sounds.

More Is Not Better In Link Building

Just going out and getting a bunch of links won't necessarily
help your site. You need quality links to get higher search
rankings. But sometimes figuring out what makes one link better
than another is tough. This is where you do need to keep up with
what the online marketing consultants are recommending or you may
just be wasting your time.

Targeted Anchor Text Is A Must

When you start pursuing links on sites, you need targeted anchor
text. However, you don't want to use the same text everywhere.
Google will notice that in a bad way. You want to use two or
three different phrases and the proper name of your website. If
you can't get anything but an image link, make sure the site
owner puts your anchor text or the name of your site in the ALT
tag of the image.

Pay Attention To Links In And Out

Google looks at the site where your link appears and decides how
much benefit your site gets back. A site with a lot of inbound
links passes more authority to your site. At the same time, being
linked on a site full of low-quality, outbound links probably
won't help you much.

PageRank Isn't Everything

Don't be one of those site owners who sees nothing but PageRank.
A site with high PageRank can still have low link value. This is
especially true of sites that sell links. Steer clear of sites
that use phrases like "sponsored by" or "paid for by." Google
may not let that site pass PageRank at all. Move on. They're not
worth your time.

Concentrate On Site Relevance

Let's say your site is about red widgets. You get a link on a
site about purple doohickeys. That link isn't worth as much as
one on a site about red widget management. Make sure you're
pursuing links in relevant places and look at how those places
are optimized. If a site owner gives you a choice of having a
link on a page titled "About Us" or one with the title "About
Red Widgets," which one do you choose? The link on the optimized
page, "About Red Widgets," has more value.

An Online Marketing Consultant Checks What's Not Obvious

Take your cue from the pros and check sites in ways that aren't
obvious. For instance, in any search engine, you can type in
"cache:" followed by a site url and find out if the site has
been indexed and when it was last crawled. But what do those
dates mean?

Chances are good that if the site hasn't been crawled in 30-45
days, it's not a good place for a link. But some domains have
more value than others. For example, links from .edu domains are
better than from a .com, but .info is worth less. All these
factors should be weighed in judging a site's worth in your link
building efforts.

Does Social Networking Matter?

We've all seen the little link bars under blog posts and in
forums asking people to Digg or Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or
StumbleUpon. Do you need to try to get links in places where
social networking can happen? Yes. Alone those links may not have
a lot of value, but Google is increasingly looking at the
"active Web" in determining site authority.

It's time consuming, but participating in forums and social sites
and getting blog owners to run your articles with your linked
anchor text included can be worth your time. But remember,
relevance is a basic rule in online marketing consulting.

Are You Getting Clean Links?

When you get a link on a site, do you go look at the page's
source code? Is there anything extra in the "href" tag on the
link? Is the site using redirect code? Is there a "nofollow" in
the site's meta data? If there is, the link is useless to you.
It won't pass any authority to your site because that code tells
the search engines not to follow the link. Make sure you're
getting clean links.

When you're on a tight budget and trying to develop your site
and get higher search rankings, it can be a tough decision to
work online marketing consulting into your thinking. The Web used
to be pretty much a do-it-yourself place. That all started to
change in 2004 when people began talking about "Web 2.0."

It's harder than ever to judge quality link building in the new
world of Web applications and social networking. You can do it,
but try to stay up to speed on what the online marketing
consultants are recommending as good strategies. The Web is
changing all the time. Good link building takes time and effort;
you don't want to waste those any more than you want to waste
money during hard times.
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Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market
on a realistic budget. You can learn about his professional
Internet Marketing Coaching and Consulting Services on his home
page: http://strategicwebmarketing.net/ He also offers
Affordable SEO services (and d-i-y Coaching), which you can
learn about here: http://strategicwebmarketing.net/seo.html Get
to know Paul, just visit Strategic Web Marketing.net today!
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