General Link Building Tips - LBS

Below are some good general guidelines for link building.
Stay Active
Diversify
Monitor

1. Stay Active
Good link building is not a one-time event; it is a continuous effort that must be constantly maintained. As opposed to a single sudden burst in links, link building that is constantly maintained makes linking seem more natural. Also, staying active is essential for increasing rankings, expanding brand awareness and gaining an edge over competitors. Keep in mind that while you’re not building links your competitors probably are so once you get into the lead you must maintain it.

2. Diversify
Diversity is important in a few different aspects of link building. It’s important to build a diverse set of links. This means not relying too heavily on one link type and trying to incorporate many different link types into the linking campaign. The best way to create a link plan and decide on link type distribution is to examine keywords and competitors in the field. By analyzing a competitor’s backlink profile you will be able to discover certain keywords which are less competitive, not being used, or weak links (little link juice). Also, you will be able to see which types of links your competitors are using. Based on this information you can decide which keywords types of links will be more effective for your campaign and how to distribute them.
Diversity is also essential when choosing which anchor text to use and which landing pages. Relying too heavily on a single anchor text or landing page will be ineffective and garner negative search engine attention. Spreading different anchors and landing pages across different link types helps give a natural appearance to a link profile which stays under search engines’ radars.

3. Monitor
Keeping a record of links built, the date they were built and which anchor and landing page were used is a greatway to keep track of your linking campaign and a good way to keep things organized. A great tool to use to check your own and your competitors’ backlink profiles is http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/.

Assuming the point of your link building campaign is to increase SERP rankings it’s a good idea to be regularly updated on your site’s SERP rankings. The easiest way to do this is to sign up for Google Analytics. Once you have enough information about your SERP rankings you can find correlations between them and your links. Based on the relationship patterns you find between the links and the rankings you can change, improve and develop your link building plan accordingly.