Increase Link Popularity to Rank in Google

Link building for a website is done by increasing the number of inbound links to your website - in other words, increasing the number of websites that link to yours. Link building increases your link popularity, which in turn will cause your website to rank higher in the search engines (according to Google).

There are a great many products and services to assist with the link building aspect of search engine marketing. As a search engine marketing expert it is my experience that many website owners and SEM/SEO agencies view links as either "good" or "bad" - with a very narrow interpretation as to what may fit in those categories. While I certainly agree there are a vast number of "bad" links, or poor quality, it is not a good idea to to categorize all links as only "good" or "bad". In doing that, you could be setting yourself up for a major pitfall (drop in the SERPs - search engine results pages).

For example, let us assume your goal is to acquire only static text link ads on websites with a Google Page Rank (PR) of "5" or greater. What happens six months down the road when that same website has lost Google PR, dropping to a "3"? Does that suddenly make that link partner a bad link? Not necessarily - not when you figure that no one, and I mean no one, knows Google's algorithm for determining Page Rank.

Let us analyze this further: At one time there was a Google penalty placed on websites who were found to run text link ads site wide. But, things have changed - with the addition of so many blogs containing static, site-wide sidebars and footers, how is it that sites can be penalized for having site wide links?

There are factors we simply cannot control and there is no one-set answer in terms of "good" or "bad" links. I think the answer as to what is truly "good" or "bad" resides in using a variety of link building strategies and a variety of link building parameters - ensuring your link profile is dynamic and can withstand any changes in the algorithms.

The moral of this story? Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify the types of links you are building by choosing a combination of static text link ads (home page, site run, and sub-page), directory submissions, blog posts, and even banner ads with underlying "alt text" using your specific keywords.