It’s fairly well acknowledged nowadays that link building is an important factor when it comes to SEO, and helps enable your website to rank for search terms in competitive niches. However, most fail to realise the importance of quality over quantity and this makes all the difference.

Inexperienced (and some “advanced”) search engine optimisers believe the more links pointing to your website, the better your website will perform in the SERPs (search engine results pages). However this isn’t always the case and can potentially damage your ranking opportunities if done incorrectly.

Search engines base their algorithm (sorting of results) by various factors, some of which are more important than others. Generally, the more important the factor, the harder or longer it can take to achieve. As link building is a necessity for all websites, it’s situated quite high on the list. Some terms like “credit” or “travel” can take years to achieve due to their competitive nature whereas terms such as “purple christmas tree” might only take a few months, depending on competition and amount of traffic.

The ultimate question thus becomes; “How do I build quality links?” From my experience, it is best to hire a professional, someone who understands SEO, the ins and outs and all-arounds. As with any topic, learning takes time, money and patience whereas investing in other’s time to do SEO may benefit you more in the long term. However, if you do have some time up your sleeve and wish to get started on building your website’s authority, there are a few simple steps you can take:

• Article Syndication: We aren’t all novelists nor have perfect grammar and punctuality, however if you have a flair for writing, article syndication is always a great step to improving your website’s authority. Writing articles relevant to your website and submitting them to well known websites can help you in the long run. Just remember to include a link to your website!
• Linking: Contact other related websites and see if they’re happy to place a link on their website to yours. They may ask for a “reciprocal link” (Website A links to Website B and vice versa). This is not as effective as it used to be, however still is beneficial. Having a one way link to your website will always be more beneficial to you, so keep your website informative!

In regards to the second tip, keep your website informative and people will ‘naturally’ link to it. The more people linking from authority websites, the more authority you accumulate. However, remember to keep everything you do at a steady and ‘natural’ rate so when you do hire SEO services from professionals, the transition will be smooth and benefit you much more.

Remember, quality websites (more authoritative) will always be 10x more beneficial than non-authoritative. Keep focused on quality links from quality websites combined with great SEO from professionals and you will have one quality high-ranking website yourself.

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