Link building always comes with the underlying threat of penalisation, but the game itself is actually easier than you think, and funnily enough, the answer is right in front of you: work with the search engine and take its side when constructing your inbound link network. Search engines give more reward to an organic link structure, as they recognise the difficulty of obtaining organic links as well as the scarcity. A search engine views organic links as a key indicator of your website’s popularity. So the question is, how can you as a website owner build a polished inbound link network consisting entirely of natural links?

Here are a few factors you need to consider when building a link network full of digital relics and rubies:

1. Go natural with your links – This one is blatantly obvious and reiterates the above point. Search engines value organic links, and disregard artificial links. A natural link structure is one that maintains the following characteristics: the inbound anchor link text varies, there is only a gradual increase in the number of inbound links, the website only links outbound to reputable websites and there are barely any reciprocal links. So what are artificial links? Firstly, all anchor text links are normally identical, secondly the inbound link count displays drastic increases in a short period of time. What else? Oh yeah, the outbound links suck – often linking out to satellite websites that no-one cares about (nor does Google for that matter) and a high percentage of the links pointing inbound are reciprocal… Indicating to the search engine that there has been some sort of exchange taking place – not good at all. Artificial links are like steroids… They inject massive growth into the website, and will perhaps contribute to some short term success, only to have the panel of Google bots knock them back to a position worse from which they started… And in the world of search, redemption is hard.
2. High authority links > Life - Rather than aimlessly shooting for links, do some research into the authority of a website and its popularity. One singular link with a website with, let’s say, a Google PageRank of 7 is more likely to be of more benefit than 5 links from a website that has a PageRank of 3. And hey, if you’re capable of scoring links with a super high PageRank then in my opinion, you’re badder than Bear Grylls himself!
3. Link relevance - I bet you’ve read this everywhere, and you’re reading it now, and you’re sick of reading it but for some reason you can’t look away… It’s kind of hypnotic isn’t it? HA! It’s true though, as clichéd as it is. When scouting the web for link opportunities, you should aim for trusted sites (sites that have been around for a while, normally with a Page Rank of 5 >) that are topically relevant. If your website sells ice to eskimos, then aim to score some links in some online innuit communities.
4. Referring pages should only have a couple of links – In a perfect world, high authority domains would provide a link to your site and your site only. Unfortunately it just doesn’t happen this way. If you do score a link-back from a nice, hearty domain then make sure that the domain is being liberal on the link juice. When a website lists too many outbound links, regardless of the site authority, securing a link from said website is virtually pointless because your link value will be diluted and shared by the other sites. You wouldn’t pour yourself a watered down cup of cordial, would you? Treat your inbound links with the same regard, otherwise you’re going to end up like junior over here when you find out that all of your hard work account for nothing.
5. Site-wide links – If you can secure yourself a site-wide link… Say, on a blogroll with a hundred pages or so, then you’re luckier than Falcor the magical luckdragon. Honestly though, you’ve got to be extremely cautious with this sort of stuff. If you secure a site-wide link and that website already has an excessive amount of cached pages in existence, then your link count is going to explode and your domain is going to be penalised. If you want a natural blog-roll link, secure the link early whilst the blog is still in its prenatal stages. This way, your link count will only increase incrementally with each new blog post – Google sees nothing wrong with this!
6. Incoming link URL format – promoting 5 or so different home page URL variations is not good practice – you’re actually doing yourself more harm than good here because you’re effectively diluting the link value. For example:
   • http://websalad.com.au
   • http://websalad.com.au/
   • http://www.websalad.com.au
   • http://www.websalad.com.au/
   • http://www.websalad.com.au/home

   All mean the same thing! It just means that you’re sharing the link value across different variations and it’s doing nothing in your favour. Choose one inbound link format and stick to it. As for external sites linking to your homepage, unfortunately you will have no control as to how they set their URLs. If a website does link to your page via a different variation, it mightn’t hurt to send them a suggested destination URL.

7. Keyword anchor text links – Common sense! Pass on the link value via target keywords. Obtaining keyword links in directories is hard to obtain, but there’s nothing stopping you from targeting niche forums and blogs. One thing to note, make sure there is a diversity of keywords in your link network. Linking to the same keyword over and over will trip a spam filter.
8. Go Deep – Try to aim for at least 40% of your links to be pointing to pages deeper within your website other than the home page. The idea with deep links to have the external link pointing to a page within your website that is more content related.
   
9. No Follow Links suck – No follow links are common SEO knowledge, however if you’re new to this it might save you a lot of trouble in future to know. A few years ago, Google implemented a html attribute entitled link rel=”nofollow” – the purpose of this attribute is simple, to render your link effort useless to the search engine. This tactic was deployed to remove the spamming incentive to drop links in any random internet domain. When you’re looking for links back to your website, it is imperative that these links are what we like to call “do follow”, it just means that the rel=”nofollow” attribute hasn’t been applied to your links and you’re still getting the Google juice. If you have Firefox, might I recommend that you try the “search status” toolbar. It has a nice little “nofollow” link identifier that can save you a lot of trouble!

Where to get started…

Now, reading the above information is all fine and dandy but it might be a little bit overwhelming and at times vexing if you’re trying to do it all yourself. The link building game is one giant, time-consuming puzzle. There are billions of pages on the internet, so if you have a vacated look on your face it’s easily justified. If you’re looking for places to start then you might want to try some of the following:

Directory Listings – Directory websites are perhaps the most boring sites in existence, but their purpose is extremely useful to build up your inbound link count. There are millions of online directories, but as long as you assess each directory website with the above criteria it should make the selection process a hell of a lot easier. Here are some of the web’s premier directories (be aware that some of these are paid directories):

• Local –
• Hotfrog.com.au
• Diggyguide.com.au
• Localbusinessguide.com.au

• Web-wide –
• DMOZ.org
• Joeant.com
• Dir.yahoo.com
• Business.com
• Botw.org
• Skaffe.com

Niche forums and communities – Do a bit of research into the social communities surrounding your target niche. An easy way to isolate relevant blogs and forums is to utilize the “show options” feature on the Google search bar, then refine the search based on what you want to target accordingly – as seen in the below example:

Thanks for reading, we hope you found this post helpful. Until the next time, adios!

1. Keep your SEO tactics to yourself – All it takes is one bitter blog reader, affiliate or competitor to issue a complaint to Google detailing the nature of your SEO tactics. For example, John Chow (author of JohnChow.com) – a blogger of considerable notoriety, openly discussed on his blog how he asked bloggers to link back to his blog with an anchored keyword. The end result? Google laid down the hammer and it took him over a year to regenerate a decent Page Rank.
2. Don’t over-optimize your site with target keywords – Google indexes everything according to relevance, and not only this, it also has filters in place to nullify any keywords or phrases that have been aggressively targeted in landing pages or in meta tags. How to avoid this? Be liberal. Make your content relevant, and ensure that the application of your keywords isn’t too over-bearing. Take an outsider’s perspective – if someone can read your text and easily identify and keyword repetition, Google most certainly will act the same way. The key is to work with Google, and not against it.
3. Don’t sculpt your Page Rank using tag attributes – Namely, the ‘rel=nofollow’ tag attribute, Google has since decided to disregard the value of this tag and for quite a valid reason. It was being used to nullify link authority and re-direct link juice to target landing pages – known more formally as ‘page rank scultping’. Some companies still choose to manipulate this tactic, but we recommend that it is something you should avoid – this technique is tired and highly temperamental.
4. Artificial link profiles – Google filters out sites if their link profiles match any of the following criteria:
   • Links are too close together, or similar links recur through your page frequently.
   • The anchor text of all of your links is identical (they all re-direct to the same landing page).
   • You’re links aren’t deep enough to other pages
   • Links are low quality and irrelevant to the site content
   • If there are sidebar and footer links – these rank poorly.
   • Too many reciprocal links

Don’t try and manipulate Google’s search algorithm, as you will be quickly identified and neutralized!

Right, so it sounds a little bit scarier than it actually is, but it’s not worth taking the chance.

5. Finally, a common sense practice – Don’t use SEO to promote spammy websites! Adhere to the guidelines, and work with the Google algorithm.

Firstly, let’s look at the structure of Bing search in comparison to Google. A simple search for a retail product, let’s say, ‘iphone’ will return search results as organized into 3 distinct formats. On the far left ‘related searches’, also known as the ‘explorer pane’ which are based on relevant categories – for example, in your search for iphone you will find that the explorer pane breaks the results down into categorical tabs. As a result from this search the tabs that appear individually relate to: price, geographical region, buying, unlocking, reviews, cost and news. How does this relate to SEO, exactly? Well as a result of the explorer pane, if you’re a provider of iphone accessories for example, you should be tailoring your target search terms to match the category in which you want to be listed on Bing. It’s a new level of search refinement that experts predict will be highly favoured amongst online shoppers.

Now let’s move across the page… In the center of the Bing SERP is your archetypal search format in which the raw results are listed and ranked according to keyword relevance and authority, and then on the far right you will find your sponsored links. Sounds a lot similar to Google, right? Aside from the results page layout, the features are virtually identical. But where Bing has made this prehistoric format innovative is its caching of extended meta data – if you hover over the right hand side of a search listing a small pane appears, giving you an extended insight into the content of the web page you’re looking to view complete with some links to other elements included in that web page. This is great for organic SEO, why? Simple – more of your site text is being fed into the Bing SERP display, which means that if you’re consistent with the use of your target keywords throughout your entire site copy, you significantly heighten your chances of being indexed with higher search engine authority – but in arguing this point; Google reads the organic relevance of your site text anyway.
So is it worth alternating your SEO strategy to account for Bing’s newer features? The answer is No. Google already has, and will continue to set the standard for search engine optimization… Don’t believe me? Here it straight from the source itself:

“Ultimately, SEO is still SEO. Bing doesn’t change that. Bing’s new user interface design simply adds new opportunities to searchers to find what the information they want more quickly and easily, and that benefits webmasters who have taken the time to work on the quality of their content and website design.”– Bing Webmaster Center Team, Microsoft

At the end of the day, SEO is all about the quality of your content, intelligence of your site design and the execution of your targets. In essence, if you follow this universal notion, you can’t go wrong in ranking well in any SERP.

Think of Bing and Google to be similar to the video game characters Ken and Ryu from street fighter, both have similar functions, but different specialties – and one well always be favoured over the other!