Apart from your website content, another very important factor search engines use when ranking websites is the number and quality of links pointing to your website. This means, how many websites have a hyperlink to your website.

You can check which websites link to any website by going to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and putting a website’s URL to the box provided.

There are many to increase the number of links pointing to your website and here are the most common and most effective ways:

• Exchanging links with other your related websites
• Submitting your link to free or paid web directories
• Submitting original articles with your tips to free article directories
• Commenting on other your blogs
• Creating social media profiles etc.

When building any type of link to your website, it is important to follow these rules:

• The website’s content should be somehow relevant to your
• Give priority to local websites if you are targeting a specific area
• Make sure that the hyperlinked phrase is actually one of your main keywords, as opposed to your name or your company name
• If you are asked to send somebody a HTML of the link you would like them to put on their website, make sure it is in this structure:

<a href=”http://www.YourWebsite.com” title=”Keyword1,Keyword2, Keyword3”>Keyword1</a>

Before we start talking about search engine optimisation and link exchange in more detail, let’s define a few terms:

1.     URL – this is the address of the page you are linking to, i.e. http://www.YourWebsite.com. Make sure that when you are building external links, you include the whole URL address, also with “http://”

2.     Anchor text – this is the clickable text you can see on the website that is linking to your page. This should contain your most important keywords. For example, your website could be using “your [YourTown]”.

3.     Hyperlink title – this is a little bit into coding – but don’t be scared, it’s pretty easy. Every hyperlink looks something like this in the HTML code:<a href=”http://www.YourWebsite.com” title=”Keyword1,Keyword2, Keyword3”>Keyword1</a>

Can you see the title=”Keyword 1, Keyword 2” there? Yes, it should contain your keywords, although you can use a sentence as well – and when you hover over such an optimised hyperlink, you can see these keywords.

This is the most obvious part of link building – and there are three most common ways how you can go about it.

1. Talk to Website Owners You Know

If you have any friends/partners/customers who have their own websites related to your, ask them to place your link on their website.

As determined by the number, quality and type of linked pages, most search engines don’t even consider websites if there is not at least one or two links pointing to these sites from other websites. Finding websites with similar content (but not your competitors) and high link popularity is one way of increasing your site popularity.

2. Find out Who Links to Your Competing Websites

Another option would be to get a list of your competing websites and find out

which websites are linking to them.  You can do this by going to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and typing a website’s URL into the box provided.

Then you need to review the linking websites and check for these criteria:

• Are they not spamming (too many external links on a page – over 50)?
• Would it be beneficial for you to exchange links with them?
• Would it be beneficial for their visitors to have link to our website there?
• Are they related to your?

3. Respond to Other People Asking for Link Exchange

If you are contacted by other similar websites owners to put their link to your website, you should always first check them out, have a look at their website, and make sure they are not spamming.