Today we are looking at an overview of linking strategies.  We lay down a foundation for the correct mindset of what we should do.

The Foundation

First of all, there is little else that I like least in the world of site marketing than ‘begging’ a site to link to mine. It’s demeaning, it feels like begging and I won’t do it. There are too many good ways to accomplish this.

Now again, let’s recap why we want to have links pointing to our site - the bottom line is that search engines love them. So they are necessary if we are going to garner that easy, FREE traffic from the organic search engine results.

Let’s explore why search engines like Inbound Links so much. The main reason is that it is tangible evidence that a site is popular among the internet community. In other words, if the site is popular and great, we are going to jump on the bandwagon and list it highly as well. 

There are all types of linking strategies and methods out there today. There are a myriad of link exchange services which attempt to bring like minded people together to exchange Inbound Links - and I have used a couple, with marginal results. I have found that most of the people involved in link exchanges to have sites of marginal quality and content - just my opinion. That doesn’t mean they are all marginal, but most are.

Let’s think about it for a moment. If you had a very successful, rich content site that had thousands of visitors per day, would you feel the need to join a link exchange group? No.

Also, there all sorts of other "Blackhat" schemes about spinning off dozens of mini-sites, all owned by you, having the linking back to your ‘real’ site. I have also tried these with marginal results. Some may have had some success, but in the end, the search engines adjust and you are left in the cold again.

The problem that I have with all of these methods is that they are trying to cheat the system. I’m not trying to be an officer of virtue here, but what I am saying is that the search engines are engineered to reward highly rich content sites - why spend your time doing anything other than what they want? If you just accept this premise, then you will save yourself so much time and effort.

This this foundation in mind, we are going to cover some pragmatic ways to approach your target sites for Inbound Link requests.

Till then…