1. Inbound Links Tell Your Online Story<br />An inbound link is a link located on another website that points to your web page. It’s also called an external link, which is different from an internal link that is found within a website and links from one page of a website to another page on the same site. An example of an inbound link is an industry specific directory website that has a link to your company page or a link in a blog post that directs readers to your products or services. Inbound links can be created via link building activities, but can also form organically when a website owner or blog writer decides to include your link on their own.<br />Link building is a key component of search engine optimization. It’s an ongoing process to increase the number of quality inbound links that point to a website since this is a search engine ranking factor. Link building activities include online publicity, which involves writing newsworthy press releases that include links and distributing them online through the numerous available PR services, submitting a site to online directories and niche directories, creating local search engine profiles, commenting on industry related blog posts, and submitting informational articles to article marketing and document sharing sites. It is important to build a link strategy that will span several months or even years. Creating too many inbound links too quickly looks spammy to the search engines and will backfire. Ten to twenty link building activities a month is plenty. <br />Organic links take more time to earn, but are very valuable. The key is to distribute quality content that will get noticed by other reputable sources in the industry. As a website owner promotes their work and builds authority as a leader they will receive incoming relevant links to their website naturally over time. <br />The combination of links developed by the website owners and by outside parties essentially tells the story of a website. There are numerous ways to check out your own “story”. Google’s webmaster tools allow a website owner to view all of their inbound links. Link Diagnosis is another option for those without a Google account. The information that these tools provide give a user an inside look as to how they are viewed by the search engines. If a website is linked to by respectable sites it is respected by association. It’s a good idea to keep tabs on your inbound links to make sure that you aren’t associated with bad, spammy sites. Sometimes there isn’t much that you can do, but you can always attempt to reach out to those website owners to ask that your link be removed. You can also use a link audit to learn the stories of your competitors. You can see where they are linking and use it to your advantage. If they have good links from a particular site, you can make it a goal of yours to get links there too. You don’t need to copy everything that they do, but it’s good to have an idea. Think of it as another form of competitive analysis research. <br />About the Author:<br />Brick Marketing is a Boston MA based full service web marketing company. For more information please call 877-295-0620 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com. <br />