In this tutorial, my aim is to cover everything you need to know about SEO link building, including ways to build backlinks and common questions you may have.

Before I begin, let’s me quickly go through some fundamentals.

- Link building is about building links FROM other websites to YOUR website, not from YOUR website to OTHER websites. You may laugh, but many newbies can’t even get this idea right.

- Next fundamental. In the SEO world, we often use the word backlink, which refers to links from OTHER websites TO your website. If you link to other websites, that’s NOT a backlink to you.

- Last fundamental. SEO link building is not just about building backlinks. It’s about building SEO backlinks. (Read this article on the difference between a backlink and an SEO backlink.)

Once you are clear on the fundamentals, let’s move on to the exciting part……

Ways To Build Backlinks

1) Google’s answer to link building

Officially, Google wants you to create great contents and/or services in your website, so that people can see the value in your website and link to you.

If you strictly follow this strategy, it may take you a long time before you can see any result.

But there are ways to accelerate the process and I shall list them below:

- Create link bait. For example, write an article on 101 ways to do something or a long list of resources. This kind of article will usually arouse people’s interest within your niche and thus link to that article. If you have a blog, put your link bait article in the Popular Article listing. The idea is to get more people to read that article and link to it.

- Provide a useful online application on your website, so that people will naturally link to you in their blogs or forums.

- Distribute free templates or scripts of any kind, such as Wordpress theme, website template, free script, free plugin etc, with a backlink to website. When people use them, they will have to link to you.

The rest of the methods are not recommended by Google. But they are proven to work and are very likely to continue working for many years to come.

2) Effective textbook ways to build backlinks

Just pick up any SEO ebook and you’ll see these link building strategies:

- Distribute articles to article directories, aka article marketing.

- Post comments in blogs.

- Post in forums.

- Create pages in Blogspot, Squidoo, Hubpages and other social networking sites.

- Adding stories to Digg, Propeller and other social bookmarking sites.

- Press release.

- Submit your link to non-reciprocal link directories.

- Exchange links with friends or other webmasters, through article exchange or blogroll exchange. Though Google doesn’t like reciprocal links, reciprocal links still count. Just don’t over do it. What Google frowns is EXCESSIVE reciprocal links.

3) Other seldom-mentioned but effective ways to build backlinks

- Create accounts in social networking sites and membership sites that show your profile in public (there are thousands of them out there, with high PR) and include backlinks in your profile. You can create as many accounts as you like. (This method is extremely spammy, but it works.)

- Create your own linking network within your domains. This is applicable to those with lots of domains. You can divide your domains into groups and cross link them. Just make sure that they are not reciprocal links. (This method can be very powerful!)

- Create a simple software and submit it to hundreds of software directories, with a backlink to your website. Most software directories have high PR. These are great backlinks for you.

4) Buy links

Although Google says “do not buy links”, buying links still work. If you want backlinks from high PR web pages (not website), buying links seems to be the only option for most people.

But use it at your own risk. I doubt Google has an algorithm to catch you. In most cases, websites are caught because someone reports it to Google.

5) Participate in link building systems

- Link exchange networks

This is the earliest form of link building system, where webmasters create a link directory on their websites and link to one another. Such links are categorized under reciprocal links (i.e. I link to you, you link to me).

This kind of link building system is infamous and Google hates it because it doesn’t provide any value other than boosting search engine ranking.

There are rumours that Google ignores exchanged links (or reciprocal links). I doubt it. Google may discount reciprocal links, but it doesn’t ignore such links.

Honestly, I am not a fan of link exchange and have never tried any. My advice is stay away from such networks because there are better and safer linking systems out there.

- 3-way link networks

Instead of “I link to you, you link to me”, 3-way link networks work by linking A to B, B to C and C back to A. To Google, these are not reciprocal links.

This is my preferred link building network and I have used it for years. The only downside is such a linking network can only build backlinks to the homepage. If you want to build backlinks to internal pages, aka deep linking, you’ll have to resort to the 3rd option.

- Content syndication system

In such a system, you will post articles to a network of blogs or websites within the system. You can view this as another form of article marketing, except that the submission process is much simplified since you are doing it through a centralized system. This is my favorite link building strategies because I can build unlimited backlinks to unlimited web pages.

Common Questions About Link Building

1) Do nofollow links count?

No. Here’s what Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, wrote “The essential thing you need to know is that nofollow links don’t help sites rank higher in Google’s search results.”

So when you build links, make sure that that link is not a nofollow link. You can easily identify nofollow links using Firefox plugins such as SearchStatus.

2) Do links from PR 0 sites count?

Yes. There is a myth going around saying that links from PR 0 sites don’t count. It’s a myth. What doesn’t count is if that link is from a web page that is NOT indexed by Google. If a web page is indexed by Google, it doesn’t matter whether the web page has PR 0 or PR 10. They will all help in your search engine ranking, but to different degrees of course.

Some experts say you should only post articles to popular article directories. I say NO. Distribute your articles to as many article directories as possible. I’ve gotten websites into top search results solely through article marketing alone. All links count, even if they have no PR.

3) Do links from unrelated contents count?

Yes. This is another common myth. Links from related content MAY score better, but links from unrelated links definitely counts.

4) Do links from duplicated contents count?

Yes. Links from unique contents MAY score better, but links from duplicated contents definitely count.

The only concern here is because the content is duplicated, Google may not index that the web page. As I said, links from un-indexed pages do not count.

“Kenneth, are you trying to say  Google penalizes duplicated contents?”

I wouldn’t say Google penalize duplicated contents. What happen is when Google indexes many web pages with the same content, it will only show some of the web pages and keep the rest in its sandbox. The priority usually goes to those websites with high PR. So let’s say you distribute an article to 300 article directories, probably only 200 of them are indexed. The other 100 may not be indexed and thus those links are not counted.

5) What is the relationship between PageRank and link building?

Technically, PageRank (PR) is like a vote. If a web page with high PR links to your web page, that link will carry more votes and thus add more to the PR of your web page. 0 PR doesn’t mean that web page carries no vote, it just carries lesser votes.

One thing to note is PageRank is web page specific. A PR 8 website doesn’t mean all its web pages have PR 8. So if you happen to buy links, make sure you pay for links from web pages with high PR, not just websites with high PR.

6) When submitting to link directories, can I go for reciprocal link option?

If you have done submissions to link directories, you will know that there are 3 options, free, reciprocal and paid. Don’t go for the reciprocal option. This is because over time, some of these directories may close down and you may end up having lots of bad links on your website, which can harm you SEO ranking and even get your website delisted.

I think I have more or less covered all you need to know about SEO link building. If you have other question about link building, just post your question below.

In this article, I’m going to document some important SEO mistakes that I came across. Visit this page regularly because I’m going to update it from time to time. Whenever I come across a new mistake that worth noting, I will list it here.

Simply avoiding these mistakes can drastically improve your search engine ranking.

Let’s start with the most common mistake of all……

1. Going after competitive keywords

General keywords are usually competitive keywords. If you do not conduct any form of keyword research, chances are you will think of keywords that are too general and hence too competitive.

For example, if a person runs an internet marketing related blog, he may want to optimize his blog for “make money online” (which has 149 million competing webpages!!). Someone running a Forex website may want to optimize his site for “forex trading” (which has 11 million competing webpages!!).

Aiming for competitive keywords with huge demand is not wrong, but it’s too ambitious. You may be building links like mad, but still wonder why you are not seeing any improvement in your search engine ranking.

The secret here is to go for keywords with some demand and low competition.

I’m not going to go into the details of how to do keyword research because I’ve written about it in Long Tail Keyword Research - A Step-By-Step Guide.

2. Optimizing for too many different keyword phrases per webpage

Don’t be overly ambitious and try to optimize too many keyword phrases for one webpage (including homepage).

For example, I’ve seen a marketer trying to optimize his homepage for “make money online fast”, “affiliate marketing for newbies” and “internet marketing strategies”.

Assuming the keywords have low competition “which I doubt so”, how is he going to include all these keywords into his title tag, which is an important factor in search engine optimization (Read SEO Tutorial Part 1 for details)?

The story will be different if he tries to optimize for “proven ways to make money online fast”, “ways to make money online”, “ways to make money online fast”, “make money online fast”. In this approach, it may seem that he is also trying to optimize many keyword phrases, but technically, all the keyword phrases are linked.

He can have a title tag of “proven ways to make money online fast”. For link building, he can start with “proven ways to make money online fast” and “ways to make money online fast”, which may be an easy target to shoot. Then he can challenge harder keywords such as “ways to make money online” and “make money online fast” and eventually “make money online”. The best part is, his link building effort will help to prove the ranking for all the keywords.

Let me share with you a real-life example. For LeadsLeap.com, our aim is to get to the top rank for “lead generation”. But we started with a longer keyword phrase of “free lead generation system”, and then slowly work our way up. When building links, we began with “free lead generation system”, then move on to “lead generation system” and then to “lead generation”. See the point?

As of today, we are in the first page for keywords like “free lead generation system”, “free lead generation”, “lead generation system” and even “free lead system”. We can optimize for several keywords at one time because they are all related, and we start with long tail keywords.

Lastly I want to emphasize that a website can be built to target unlimited keywords, but EACH webpage in a website, including the homepage, should only be built to target limited number of keywords, preferably linked keywords. If you have 2 keyword phrases that are totally different, you should prepare 2 articles and build 2 webpages for each of them.

3. Poor onpage optimization

This is usually a newbie’s mistake, where his webpage is not optimized for the keyword he is targeting. For example, the title tag may not include the keyword he is trying to optimize, or worse still the content doesn’t have the keyword at all. (Read SEO Tutorial Part 1 for details).

4. Dynamic links

You may want to note that search engines treat dynamic links as unique webpages.

For example, to Google,

http://domain.com/blog/?p=1 is one webpage;

http://domain.com/blog/?p=2 is another webpage.

This may seem obvious since default Wordpress links look like this, but not so obvious in some cases.

A typical scenario is when you want to track the click-through. For example, if you post an article in Ezinearticles and you want to track the click-through, your link may look like this:

http://domain.com/my-article.php?track=1234

To Google,

http://domain.com/my-article.php?track=1234 is one webpage;

http://domain.com/my-article.php is another webpage!!!!

So from link building standpoint, you are building links for http://domain.com/my-article.php?track=1234, not http://domain.com/my-article.php.

5. SEO unfriendly website structure

Lastly, you may want to note that what you see on your webpage may not be what the search engine spider sees.

Case 1 - iframe

Some webpages are built using iframe. Without going into the details, iframe is simply a html code that allows a webpage to show contents from one or more webpages.

For example, webpage A may be full of contents, but if you view the source code, you can only see two links, one to webpage B and one to webpage C. What you see in webpage A is actually contents from B and C. To search engine spiders, webpage A has no content!

Case 2 - javascript

Similarly, some webpages may be drawing contents through javascripts. To site visitors, the webpage is full of content, but if you look at the source code, the webpage is just a bunch of javascript codes.

This is common in some plug and play systems, where you are promised to have instant online store or instant website, but those kinds of websites are only good for advertisement-generated traffic. They cannot be optimized for search engine traffic at all! Be careful when you buy into such a system.

Case 3 - excessive use of Wordpress plugins

For those of you who have your own self-hosted Wordpress blog, you will know that the market has tons of plugins that you can use on your blog, and some of them claim to boost your search engine ranking.

My advice is, know your fundamentals well before using them.

I have seen a blog with 2 different title tags, 2 different meta descriptions and 2 different meta keywords for every webpage. I believe they are generated by different plugins. The blogger may have installed 2 SEO plugins and both are trying to “optimize” the page.

I have also seen a blog with an “index,follow” meta tag and a “noindex,nofollow” meta tag, both on the same page! No one in his right mind will do that, but it can be possible if you use different kinds of plugins that work independently from each other to achieve different objectives.

Ok, that’s all for today. I’ll continue to add more common SEO mistakes when I come across them.

Next week, in Part 3 of our SEO tutorial series, I’m going to discuss ALL ABOUT LINK BUILDING.

If you have any questions or doubt about link building, post them below before next Friday. I will try to cover them in the next post.