Learn Link Building Secrets Used By SEO Experts
One of the most useful skill sets virtual assistants can develop is link building. This is a task that is a perfect fit for a virtual assistant. It is tedious, time consuming and requires knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) practices. It is probably the first thing a website owner would consider outsourcing. Proper link building can dramatically boast a client’s website, making you a valuable resource. Doing it improperly can cause serious damage to a site and your career as a VA.
There are certain fundamental rules to follow when link building that can both increase your likelihood for success and help keep you out of trouble by staying within Google’s “zone of acceptance”. The most important thing to remember is to STAY ON TOPIC! Don’t stray into gray areas. If the website you are link building for is about garden supplies, link to sites about gardening and landscaping, not rental cars and cheap hotels.
Always choose quality over quantity! Make this your mantra when link building. Three links from on-topic websites located in good neighborhoods are more effective than 50 links from off-topic sites. Off-topic sites carry zero weight and in fact can damage a website. Quality links come from related pages with good page rank.
PageRank is the measure of importance Google assigns to a Web page on a scale of 1 to10. In this formula, the Google algorithm counts the number of sites that link to a page and then assigns the page an importance score (1 poor, 10 excellent).
Major search engines keep a watchful eye out for unethical link building practices because there are numerous spammers out there who abuse the link building system by creating phony websites and artificially manufactured links. One of the most important values you can learn during your virtual assistant training is to be honest in your link building.
Areas of link building that can get you in trouble:
- Directories– Using respected directories like DMOZ and Yahoo is very effective link building. Submitting to sites that promise submissions to 200 directories is useless. These types of directories provide zero traffic and most are off-topic links. Many of these submission sites also require payment for their services. There are 4 types of directories: free, pay-for-inclusion, reciprocal and niche.
- Garbage Link Requests – These requests are link exchange emails that appear automated or mention Page Rank in the request. These types of request will lead you to get links from nearly-hidden sections of websites listing numerous off-topic sites.
- Blog Spam– This is when you sign blog comments with spammy keywords instead of your real name.
Proper backlinking is something that all virtual assistants should have a solid grasp of. Backlinks are incoming links to a web page or website.
Guidelines for backlinks:
- Vary the anchor text – use your targeted keywords, but mix them up frequently.
- Only visit good neighborhoods – avoid at all costs porn, gambling and pharmacy websites.
- Always link to related pages – links from related pages carry more “weight” than others.
Gradually increase the number of links – don’t try putting up 100 links in a day. That is a good way to get a site banned by Google. Acquire links incrementally.
Don’t make paid linking obvious – when Google spiders see words like advertisement or sponsor, they devalue the link.
The safest and most effective method to acquire quality links is by enticing individuals to link naturally to your site. This strategy is referred to as “link baiting”. Having interesting content is the best way to get quality links.
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