Getting Started on Link Building – The 5 Traditional Types
In the murky depths of the world of SEO, since the advent of Google’s Page Rank algorithm and continuing with Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird updates, link building is considered a pivotal part in the process. The process that begun with, and is still in essence, the acquisition of links from other sites that point back towards your site, has now expanded into a whole other field of SEO. Let’s take a look at 5 of the most common categories of link building that are currently in circulation.
Resource Links
The most common method of generating backlinks today is through mentioning your own websites address, or getting it mentioned by someone else, in the resource box. A resource box is, in general, a place at the bottom or in navigation bars, where URLs of resource information are mentioned. If, for example, Wikipedia takes any information from your web page, your site’s address will be listed in the references below. Backlinks from such reputable sites results in the search engine to grant increased relevance to your web page.
Reciprocal Links
As the name clearly suggests, Reciprocal links focus on a mutual link between two entities; and in the field of Search Engine Optimization: web pages. The process, in its most basic form, consists of people agreeing to place the link of the other on their own respective websites. Backlinks created using this method are known as reciprocal links. Due to the ease of this method, numerous link exchange forums and directories sprang up all over the internet where people reached mutual agreements to create a number of backlinks in a very short span of time. Now though, major search engine have discounted this method due to the process being far from natural, and not being able to indicate genuine popularity of the page.
Directory Links
Resembling an encyclopedia, various directories exist where a large number of websites are categorized according to subject matter. Visitors can simply choose the kind of website they want from the available listings as per their interests. Website owners can submit their own websites to most of these directories for free, while a select few premium directories like the Yahoo Directory charges website owners to let them list their website address. From an SEO point-of-view, directory links remain a popular resource to create one-way backlinks on high-rated pages (reputable directories).
Social Bookmarking
Since the advent of sites like Digg and Delicious, social bookmarking has been a major constituent of link building tactics. The concept revolves around the storage of bookmarks on the internet through social bookmarking sites, instead of keeping bookmarks on computers. All online bookmarks create anchor text, resulting in easy backlinks.
Blog Comments
Back when the link building boom caught on, users started to comment on blogs using their commenting profile as a link to their own webpage. To counter this, search engines introduced the nofollow tag which effectively told crawlers not to index those links or to factor them in the link count. Now though, if your comment is insightful, visitors might still click through to your profile, resulting in free traffic. Less useful, but still effective!
There we have it, the 5 traditional ways of link building to get you started on your quest to create a network of backlinks for your webpage.
