how to build linksThere are 4 possible reasons for building links:

Ranking well in search engines. This is the most important reason I can think of. The more (planned) links you build to your website, the better you’ll rank in search engines results.

Page Rank in Google. Simple. If you get a link from a page with a PR better than your PR, it’s good. Get more such links and your PR will increase also.

Direct traffic. If you add links to visible spots on high traffic sites, people will click them and come to your site. Very simple. It’s like selling something on the most crowded place in your city. You must get at least a few customers, because it’s a crowded place.

Brand awareness. People see your web address and find out about you. Of course, in such cases, your web address should be visible so people see it and come to your website next time, just by remembering the address.

How links should be so you can rank well in search engines?

  • If you build links for ranking in search engines, your links should contain a well searched set of keywords. Spend time in researching keywords.
  • the link should be DOFOLLOW.
  • Incontext links are better than sitewide links.
  • Position matters less, if the link is above the fold or not.
  • Traffic of the page that is linking to you doesn’t matter.
  • PageRank of the page that links to you matters, a link from a page with a higher PR is more important than a link from a page with low PR
  • The page that links to you must be relevant to your topic. Don’t link from pages about cars to pages about flowers.
  • Outgoing links: when you link from a page with a high number of outgoing links, the importance of the link to you is lower. Look for pages that have not that many outgoing links. Avoid link farms and directories.

How links should be so your PageRank increase?

That’s quite a straight forward story:

  • PageRank of the page linking to you matters. The higher the better.
  • Traffic of the page linking to you doesn’t matter
  • Position of your link in the page doesn’t matter, above the fold or not
  • Outgoing links matter, you should obtain links from high PR pages with not that many outgoing links. The reason is that probably the owner of the page, after the most recent PR upgrade, exchanged links with as many sites as possible, and abused his PR so when the next update will occur, the PR will probably decrease.

How links should be so your direct traffic increase?

Not much to say here, even if it is a totally different kind of link.

  • The main rule here is BE DIFFERENT AND VISIBLE!
  • Above the fold links are better because people will immediately see them
  • The color of the link should make it stand from the page: have a red link, for example
  • Have some space around your link. Don’t have your link in a group of links cause it will probably not help you much. Instead, let your link breath, some space around it would be great.
  • Have a description so people know what it is about.
  • Check the ads that appear on the right side of the screen when you search something on Google. Those are the best examples. You should also read about copyrighting, about how to write ads.
  • DOFOLLOW or NOFOLLOW, doesn’t matter for getting direct traffic, works the same.
  • Traffic of the page that links to you really matters. A percentage of people visiting the page that links to you will click your link and come to your site. Naturally, if more people will visit that page, more people will click your link. Get it? The percentage will be low, think maybe 0.5-1%, just to make some calculations. The percentage differs depending on where your link will be added.
  • There are some better positions for adding links in a page, of you can negotiate this, do it. Shortly speaking, left side and left-center positions are the best position to add banners and links, they get the highest percentage of clicks. Check the AdSense heat map, it will give you a great overview of this problem. Even if the map is explained for AdSense, it will work great for any banner and link for direct traffic.

How links should be so people find out about you?

BOLD. DIFFERENT.

Not much to say here, isn’t it?

  • Doesn’t matter if the links are DOFOLLOW or NOFOLLOW, these attributes are for search engines only
  • Have the address of the website somewhere in the link, people must find out about your site address
  • A picture says more than 1000 words. Have a banner instead.
  • Again, be bold, make people remember you. Being dull won’t help you. Better be controversial. Why do you think artists behave the way they do on the real world, making stupid things? Because they want people speak about them, so people remember.

Each link you build over time will belong probably in more than one category and almost every link you build is good. Not EVERY link, but ALMOST EVERY link, you should stay away from bad neighborhood links, they won’t do you much good.

You should build links with every possible occasion and you should never stop doing this. The more links you have, the better will be for your site. No matter that you want links for ranking well in search engines, direct traffic, brand awareness or for PageRank, you will only have benefits and honestly speaking, I don’t see this changing in the next year.

Links will probably rule for a link time. Don’t you agree?