TKG SEO Blog

Guest Blogger: Megan Jeffery
While everyone agrees that link building is still an essential part of a successful SEO campaign, it has become increasingly more difficult. Link building is easily one of the most time consuming tasks of an SEO campaign. There are plenty of articles out there to guide you, a couple of good ones I have read lately focus a little more on what not to do, such as The Link Building Kiss of Death by Eric Ward. Very simple, yet vitally important - he illustrates the idea that when requesting links, you should actually find out who has the authority to grant the request - a novel idea!

There are many theories that float around the SEO world, certain tactics that are now supposedly defunct, or are misunderstood. One of the most debated is Reciprocal Linking - you may as well have said a dirty word when you dare utter the phrase! Some now refer to it as a link exchange. I feel that there is still a very important place for this practice. I think if it makes sense, do it! There are many times when this is a perfectly acceptable practice.

Say for example, you are selling gourmet cookbooks on your Web site. It naturally makes sense to link out to a provider of gourmet cooking untensils, or pots and pans, especially if they are items recommended in your cookbooks. Asking for a link in return is also acceptable, especially if you have already placed a link to them on your site. This is beneficial for both parties, in that the sites are related, it makes sense to link to one another, it is only natural to do so. Your users will appreciate the ease with which they are able to find the cookware mentioned in your books. Their users will appreciate thier ability to buy great cookbooks to go with thier new cooking tools. A relationship is formed. This aspect is important, as you would not want to form this relationship with just anyone.

Linking to the wrong site is to be avoided. Because a link is viewed as a “vote” for that site, you want to avoid linking to the wrong kind of site. An example of this would be that your nephew Marvin has a site. His site is all about his pet cat, and he really wants you to exchange links. Don’t do it! Marvin’s cat has nothing to do with your gourmet cookbook business, it won’t benefit your users, and it will look questionable to the search engines, causing you to loose some of your standing. Now, if Marvin has a section of his site devoted to gourmet cooking, with some articles and other interesting tidbits, then it would be appropriate to link to that page, and to have him link to you from that page.

As for forming the wrong kind of relationship, be careful about whom you ask for a link. If they have a links page devoted to obscure, unrelated sites, you probably don’t want to be on that links page. The site is just trading links with anyone who is willing, and you are in the wrong neighborhood, get out!

As always, if you provide good information, some points of interest, and are willing to do some work, building links will come, slowly, but they will come.

So, how do you feel about granting link requests? Do you do it? Do you ask for a link in return?