Search Engine Optimization

Links are the fuel of search engine optimization, and are 70% of the whole process. In order to rank for highly competitive 1, 2 and 3 word phrases, site must have a large inbound link portfolio.

Ranking for a key phrase, is one part of the equation. Once rankings are achieved, one must guard them against the competition. There are several ways to do that:

• Continue building links at a natural rate (whether natural or not)
• Continue adding content

Both are requirements for maintaining leading spots on search results. Content addition is pretty straight forward, though there are some strategies to go with it, which we will discuss in the next article. In this article we will focus on link building, and maintaining that constant flow of links to the pages that dominate your niche / industry.

Important and Authoritative Site Constantly Get Links

This is why your site must constantly get a “shot” of links, whether it is natural or through your link building efforts. As a proof of this, register on Google alerts for “link:www.domain.com” and Google will email you new links it finds for that website. You will see that the authoritative websites always get new links, and have a flow. That flow does not necessarily has to be flat, or equal each month/week, but it has to be there.

Also keep in mind that Google has Google Trends, which is in my opinion just a sneak peak to what’s under the hood. Google trends can track stories, their popularity on the web, coverage, queries related to the story and links. Links is bolded in order to show that Google can correlate link spikes to events covered online, and unnatural spikes without correlation to any events can set off red flags. Aaron Wall has been talking about this for a long time now.

Keeping the flow of links to your pages, is an expense, that must be worked into your monthly SEO budget. Whether you outsource, do in house or both, make sure to keep the links flowing, and you are sure to dominate your niche / industry.