What Type of Link Building Still Works In 2016

Link building is a practice that has been in effect for a number of years on the Internet. It is the process of putting a link on your website that goes to someone else’s website, or someone puts a link on their website that goes to your site. Not only do links bring traffic from that other website to yours, but they trigger Google’s algorithm with a powerful ranking signal. Google uses them to determine how popular any given website is. The website’s credibility is also determined by these links. Search engines use them to direct web searchers to the information they are seeking.

 

Natural Links

Natural, or organic, links are those that are freely given by another website. For instance, you have a website that showcases your organic garden and produce stand. The naturopath in a neighboring town has been to your produce stand and picked up your business card that has your website printed on it. He takes it to his office, peruses your website, then offers to put a link to your website on his website page that touts healthy eating.

 

Next, the nursery from which you bought some of your plants and seeds sees the link on the naturopath’s website, and decides to put a link to your site on her website. In this way, your site’s exposure grows, more people are enticed to click on the link to your website, your credibility with the search engines grow, and then your ranking grows. When someone uses a search engine to look for organic produce in ABCville, a link to your site comes up on the first or second pages, making it easy for people to find you on the Internet.

 

Unnatural Links

An example of an unnatural link is if you go to the naturopath’s site and the nursery’s site and maybe the newspaper’s site and ask them if they will place a link to your site on theirs. Perhaps you offer a reciprocal link on your site to theirs. Unnatural links are now frowned upon, especially by Google. They used to be acceptable, but so much abuse has occurred, that Google is cracking down on their use. Because so many people have built websites that all they were for was trading links with other like sites, this has become an off-limits practice.

 

How to Get Links

The most important factor in link building is to create a website that offers only top-notch quality information or products, whichever the case may be. When you have a high quality product, whether it is a tangible or an intangible product, you want to expose your product’s website to as many people as you possibly can who are, or may be, interested in your product. This will bring more and more traffic, and thereby business, to your site. When you have a great product, one that has real value to your target audience, other sites in your niche will be more likely to want to place a link on their site to yours. You will want to ascertain that that site is a quality site also. You won’t want your link to be on a site that comes under the scrutiny of the Google “police.”

 

You will also want for your link to be located on a site whose content is in the same niche as yours is as a general rule. Sometimes, having a link to your site on an unrelated, but highly reputable, credible, and highly trafficked site can be beneficial. Look at each situation individually.

 

Site Blogs

It will be very beneficial if you set up a blog on your website. Keep it fresh, up to date, and full of interesting and helpful information. This is the trend going into 2016. Give information about your product and your business. You can also talk about your product’s industry in general. On your organic garden and produce stand website, you can discuss the benefits of eating organic produce, and inform readers about the amazing things each fruit and vegetable does inside our bodies. This will keep the attention of your regular web traffic, and keep them coming back to learn more. In turn, it will increase your monetary business at the produce stand, as well as online with the sale of related books and other items that are shippable.

 

Building Links in 2016

The way to reputable link building in 2016 is by earning those links. You do this by having an amazing product displayed on a professional-appearing website, then by doing some good old-fashioned advertising. This may take the form of phone book display ads, emails directed at specific businesses (no spamming here!), or even reverting to writing a real letter to a few carefully selected businesses whose websites you would like to appear on. These advertising methods must not ask for them to link to your website, just to make them aware of your product and where it can be found on the Internet. It should be just plain, ordinary advertising. Then, just maybe one (or more) of the people who see your advertising will check out your website and deem it worthy of linking to their website. And there you have a perfectly legal, natural, and organic link.

 

Keeping it Clean

Because so many have so seriously abused the link-building process, Google has become very strict about the practice. So you will want to be very, very careful when you do get linked to other sites. Bing and Yahoo! don’t seem to be quite so tight on their rules as Google is, but you’ll want to err on the side of caution, because you don’t know which search engine someone out there is using to search for the information or product contained on your website.

 

Still Relevant

Link building is still relevant and necessary in 2016. It is just much harder to accomplish than it used to be. You will just have to work harder and be extra prudent in the methods you utilize to practice link building from now on. In this day and age, it pays to get professional help to ensure your links are all organic.

 

 

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