1. Link Building is like High School: It’s a Popularity Contest<br />Link building is an important component of search engine optimization. It’s an ongoing campaign to increase the visibility of a website to the users and the search engines. The goal of a link building strategy is to establish trust with the search engines, resulting in a better search ranking, more visitors, and more sales. One way to establish this trust is to build inbound links from quality sites. Some inbound links are more valuable than others. Preferably, you want popular, well respected websites linking to you. The search engines will assume that you offer valuable content and are a quality site by association. So, like high school, the reputation of a website is partially determined by “who” it “hangs out with”. <br />The key to obtaining quality inbound links is to provide good content so that other websites want to link to you. Ultimately, good content is really what will get a website noticed. If a website consistently delivers relevant and engaging content, as time goes on more webmasters will discover it and link to it. The most valuable links actually come from sites that have content that is similar to yours but outrank you. <br />There are numerous ways to get a company and its website noticed online. The first is to write newsworthy press releases that provide value and distribute them online using services like PRWeb, PRLeap, and Business Wire. This is a great way to spread the word and provides an opportunity to get noticed and to get the story published on numerous sites. <br />Another effective way to get noticed and linked to is to write interesting and helpful articles and submit them to online article directories. Related sites will often pick up and display the article, so it’s important to include anchor text links that point back to your website. Remember, in order for this strategy to work the content needs to be of good quality. Nobody wants to link to something that is full of spelling and grammar errors or doesn’t have any value. Write an article with the reader’s (your target audience) needs in mind. It’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert and gain trust. Links will naturally follow in the long term since it’s likely that the article will continue to be visited well into the future. <br />Blogging should also be a part of a link building strategy. Not only is an off site blog a way to build your own links by linking to your site within the posts, but it’s a great way to get noticed by others. Much like article marketing, it allows for an opportunity to be viewed as an expert in the field. If the blog content is good, others will link to it. <br />When it comes to links, quantity is good, but quality is better. By implementing the above strategies and providing first-rate content it’s possible to be linked to by the “popular” websites. However, like every other aspect of SEO, it takes time. Work hard and be patient. <br />About the Author:<br />Brick Marketing is a Boston SEO and SEM company that offers services to both B2B and B2C clients. For more information please call 877-295-0620 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com. <br />