- Image via Wikipedia
In order to rank well on the search engines, you need to have other websites pointing to your website. These are known as inbound links. There are a number of ways of getting inbound links to your site, and several older techniques that are no longer very useful.
One of these older techniques is known as a link exchange. Link exchanges are when a number of different websites agree to exchange links. Nowadays, this method only works if you can find related websites to your subject that do not compete with you.
In other words, if you are selling furniture online, you would welcome links from websites selling furniture polish or soap, since they are not competing with you. However, if your website is about pets, you would not want a website selling animal traps to link to you.
The best way to get inbound links is to use search engines to find popular websites that are in your general field. You can then ask for a return link. I suggest emailing the webmaster for the link, using your own words, not some canned program.
Keep in mind that you do not want a lot of links all at once. That will look suspicious to the search engines. Gradual link building is best.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=694ee164-03f6-4cbd-9a67-3e4aeb176144)
Thanks for writing this.
Gradual link building is best.! yes if you build links fast what is more important is to use different anchor text for it not to make it look more unnatural.
Hi Anita,
Great to meet you at the tweetup a few weeks ago. One question I always have is whether any of the ‘user generated’ links are worth anything for SEO. For example, the link to my website above is likely a ‘nofollow’ (the default on WordPress) and does nothing for SEO. What about links from LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.?
Thanks!
Mary
Mary,
No-follow links are still links and will show up. Social media applications like Twitter and linkedin are useful to push people to your website.
I have a Taxicab company north of Dallas what kind of links should i look for? Limo co. other Taxi co. please give me alittle insite.
Thanks
Eugene
Why have I never heard of “inbound” links before. Fascinating. Dean.
google is making it tougher and tougher on link building. Penguin has changed the hearts and minds of many seo ‘experts’ but I warned them 6 months prior to the update that spamming for links was going to cost them in the long run. Sure enough, google issued penalties for websites with flimsy backlinks by the thousands. Some spammy-linked sites were even removed from the index altogether.