We always hear and read about link building, but it is not just about exchanging some links with your brother-in-law’s business and waiting for people to come in flocks to your web site. Link building is a crucial part of SEO and if it’s not done right, you might lose a great opportunity of ranking high in search results.

Good Link Building vs. Bad Link Building

First of all, links were not born equal. Some link exchange can even harm your page rank score, while others can lift it immediately. So, what does it make to be a good link? For example, in the eyes of search engines, link farms can only harm your web site credibility. Linking to unrelated web sites that offer no real content is a major mistake your online marketing assistant shouldn’t do.

As a small business owner or online marketing assistant, you dispose of some free ‘weapons’ for link exchange. Article directories, web 2.0 web sites, and bookmarking sites – they are all free and safe link exchange methods you should take advantage of.

Why Links Are Not Born Equal?

Web sites have different page ranks. To get a good page rank your site must meet several criteria, depending on every search engines algorithm.

Search engines have different algorithms to mark a web site, but quality content is the most important of them all. But sometimes you will find out that these algorithms are not perfect and a web site with fresh, outstanding content might not show up in the first search results, while another site with less interesting content might have a better rank. Why’s that? One of the possible answers is that the first site has linked to several web sites with a very good page rank -1, 2, or even 3. Because the algorithm is a mechanical process – and search engines spiders don’t actually read the content, but look for some hints to classify the site – search engines consider that if some top ranking sites have linked to the less interesting site, then it must have useful content for the readers.

In case a web site linked to an outstanding number of sites, but none of them have linking back to it, then search engines consider that that web site isn’t an authority in its area of expertise and it will not be displayed in the first search results. Reciprocal linking and editorial links are highly appreciated by search engines. If you offer free materials on your web site – like, for example, an e-book which can be downloaded only on your site – other people might recommend it on their sites or blogs and you get valuable link building and also traffic. What could be best?