First, Why Build Links at All?
Actually, before getting to which link building method is best, keep in mind the reason for actually doing link building in the first place: Link building is done because search engines typically rank a website that has more popularity and authority higher than a site that has less popularity and authority. Popularity and authority, simply put, are measurements of how many other POPULAR and AUTHORITATIVE sites link to the site in question.
For example, a link from small directories that no one goes to except to submit a link to their own site does not have much, if any, popularity or authority because few other sites on the web care to link to a boring little directory. I mean, how often do you stumble across a directory site and say “This is exactly what I was looking for, let me spend some time reading this and let me put a link to it from my own site because I’m sure people who come to my site will love to have this information”? Not often, I would guess. (There are, however, small numbers of niche directories that do have value to others and that do accumulate popularity and authority because people actually link to them.)
On the other hand, websites that have legitimately informative information that answers questions and provides real value to visitors is much more likely to accumulate its own links–and thus its own popularity and authority. If you get a link TO your site from from a site like this, your site will then gain a little popularity and authority. If you get a link to your site from MANY sites like this, your site will gain much more popularity and authority. Search engines will then start to recognize that your site should rank higher than similar sites (such as your competitors) that don’t have as many links from popular, authoritative sites.
How Link Building is Done
O.K., now for which link building method is best. As mentioned above, sites with content worth linking to accumulate links from other websites. Put another way, if YOUR site has content worth linking to, other sites will find it worth while to link to it. Thus, creating content on your site that others want to link to is the key to successful link building.
And that is the hard part–how do you create content for your own site that others will want to link to? Once you figure that out–whether it be a particularly creative video, a useful software tool, a well thought out and informative articles, a unique product or service that others find valuable and/or fun–you’ve completed the hard part of link building.
After that, it is a matter of finding and communicating to website owners who would have reason to want to link to your valuable resource. Typically those would be people who own websites and/or blogs in a similar niche as your site and who’s visitors and readers would like to know about the fun, important, or otherwise valuable content you have created on your site.
Of course finding and communicating with these site owners is a skill and an art in its own right but the better the content you’ve created for your site the easier this becomes.
So anyway, that is the best link building method, in a nutshell. Create worthy content on your own site then let others who have websites with visitors who would be interested in consuming that content know about it and ask that they link to it. It is challenging and time consuming but that is why links are such a good measure of the popularity and authority of individual websites and why search engines use those measurements to help decide which sites should rank higher than other sites. Good luck to you.
