Do You Hate Link Building?
Monday, October 20th, 2008
For many organizations, including SEO & web development agencies, link building can feel like a tedious process, in which several agonizing steps are required before seeing tangible results.
Link building may not be the most creative part of the website promotion process, but it is an extremely crucial and often overlooked step. If link building is taking up too much of your time or getting you down, the following suggestions can help you overcome some of the most frequent link building beefs.
People that are excited to begin promoting their website are usually eager to start building links right away. In their haste, they often charge ahead full-throttle, getting caught up in bad practices such as link farming and other forms of spamdexing.
The best way to avoid starting off on the wrong foot is to have a master plan in place before you begin building your links. Part of this plan should include how you think of link building itself: instead of viewing it as a process that simply needs to “get done” so you can have it over with, try to think of it as an ongoing relationship within your industry’s larger community, which will pay off in dividends if done right the first time.
Sending link exchange requests is a common and dreaded part of link building. If you’re sending out a bulk email that doesn’t seem particularly compelling even to you, then no wonder no one is responding. If you feel your requests are too generic (“Dear Webmaster”) or lack sincerity (“I like your website”) then it’s time to change them for the better. Otherwise… well you know the definition of insanity.
Another reason people hate link building is that they lack confidence in their website content. If you feel like your website is only worthy of one-time-only guests, then you’re likely to consider link building a waste of time. But if you feel confident that your website is worthy of engaging visitors, then you’ll also have the confidence in knowing that your link building efforts are not in vain. They say, “if you build it, they will come.” But it also follows that if you build it better than your competitors, they will come back.
Now we know why you should love and appreciate the websites that link to you, strive to add even more.
Still hate link building? Go ahead, get it off your chest. Tell us why!
[tags] link building, link exchange, seo companies, link request [/tags]
