Building the list of quality incoming links to your site is extremely important in bolstering your websites ‘weight’ and validity with the search engines. For a long time, links or resource pages were an important component of successful SEO. As an SEO specialist, I used to see countless linking requests in my inbox every single day. Now, not so much! Today, the social media bookmarking and fast-moving viral marketing environments have sent “traditional” link development the way of the dinosaur. Or have they?
Linking the ‘old fashioned’ way involved locating a site you felt was complementary to yours, adding them to your links page, and contacting them directly to request that they reciprocate. It requires periodic maintenance to make sure the site links are still valid and that they continue to host your link. Indeed, it involved some time and effort for both parties, but the rewards could often be counted in increased traffic from these sources.
Surprisingly, these links or resource pages that contain quality link exchanges continued to perform until 2010!
However, now your focus should be on creating content that is SO FREAKING AWESOME, your customer wants to read it, share it and stays on your website. When you do this… other people will link to you because you created something of value. Work on your PR, work collaboratively with other businesses to create something fantastic together.
“What should I do with my resource or old page filled with links?”
Rather than create a resource page, write about your resources, give real high-quality information on why your customers might want to use this resources. Don’t just create a resource page filled with links, if you have this, get rid of it or replace it as follows: Give real high-quality reasons and information on why these resources are valuable and why your customers should leave YOUR website to learn more about these resources. If you feel strongly that these resources are valuable to your reader, then they will be good for your site but don’t just create a link page for link exchanges. That’s super old-fashion and no longer relevant.
What does Google say about links and getting links?
If you thinking about a process to get links and you aren’t sure if it’s okay or above board…
Don’t do it! It may be easy to get ranking by tricking the search engines, but those rankings are fleeting, it’s far easier to win and keep good ranking because your website is awesome and Google is watching searcher intent. They are looking to see if the visitor to your stayed, clicked on your links, visited multiple pages.
