Link Building Help and Advice in Plain English

What are Links and Why Are They Important?

Links to pages on your website from pages on other websites are like popularity votes. The more links a page has the more popular the page becomes but it's not just about the number of links, it's also about the quality of the links. For example if another popular page links to your page the value of that link is higher than a link from a page that isn't popular. It makes sense really!

How Does Google Use Links?

Google uses links to help it decide which pages to put on page one for a search. Google's software uses the number and quality of links to a page as a measure of the page's authority. When a person uses Google to search, Google wants to give what it thinks is the most authoritative page the first position, the second most authoritative page the second position and so on.

Do I Need Links?

Not always. If you operate in a niche market and there aren't many or any other web pages that are relevant then you can rank number one in Google for a search with no links to your pages. However, this is rare and for the most part if you want your web pages to appear in search results you will need links to give a signal to Google that your page is an authority.

How Do I Get Links to My Pages?

• Go to a link seller
  Pros - You will get links, they should make a difference
  Cons - They may be low quality, they may eventually stop working if the link seller is found out, you may have to keep paying to keep them
• Search for links based on merit
  Pros - any links you secure could have a very positive effect on your site, links you secure should last
  Cons - securing links can be very time consuming, time spent looking for links doesn't always bear fruit, you need something worth linking to which also takes time and effort
• Article Marketing and variations on this theme
  Pros - guaranteed keyword rich links, good for generating traffic
  Cons - link quality often low
• Forum spamming and variations on this theme
  Pros - guaranteed links
  Cons - links are low quality, huge numbers of low quality links may give a SPAM signal (this is pure speculation), may harm your company reputation
• Social Media or the leverage engine
  Pros - very effective at securing traffic and links
  Cons - spamming could harm you, creating something that sparks interest isn't easy

In a Nutshell

Essentially you should be creating THE authority site on your subject with researched, well written information presented in a search friendly way. You should then encourage others to link to your authority content. If you achieve this your site will rank for the keyword searches you have optimised for.

If your site doesn't have content worth linking to getting links is hard and you have to go down the link seller and article marketing route but beware, buying links is against Google's guidelines so there are risks associated with that and article marketing also has its challenges although it's not against Google's guidelines.

How We Can Help

The services we offer include:

• Optimising your current pages
• Removing any technical barriers stopping the search engines indexing your site
• Creating better content for your site
• Searching for merit based links
• Article marketing
• Online PR
• Encouraging others to link to your content

We provide a combination of these services to our clients and we are transparent in everything we do. The only guarantee we give is we will work hard to improve the way your site ranks, we can't guarantee specific rankings, nobody can.

We do this work on a retained basis, that is you purchase a set number of hours per month and we use the hours as effectively as possible to move towards your goals.