1. Link Building is Important

The hyperlink is at the heart of the web - it allows people to move quickly from one document to another or from one site to another. This simple concept creates a powerful communicates tool that can be harnessed to deliver your business or organisational objectives.

The importance of linking is well demonstrated in research from AltaVista, Compaq and IBM in 2000. They found that sites could be classified in a number of ways: the core made up of sites that shared links and traffic (about 30%); origination sites that directed people into the core (about 20%); termination sites that had links from the core but few back in (about 20%) and isolated sites that had few links and little traffic (about 30%). This, they called the Bow-Tie Theory:

Learning how linking works and how you can create an effective linking strategy will help your site become part of the core and should be an important part of any online marketing plan.

This report describes a methodology for planning and implementing your own linking strategy. You may choose to do it yourself or if you have the budget, work with appropriate specialists to complete your plan. The report links to extensive articles on linking, free online tools, specialist software and companies that provide linking services.

"Creating an effective linking strategy should be an important part of any online marketing plan"

We also include a summary of our own linking strategy and we will report how successful we have been in generating links every month.

However, some words of warning. Link building in itself is not enough - you must generate quality inbound links. There is no magic trick to this - it demands hard, systematic work - but the rewards can be well worth the effort. If you are up for that challenge, this report and this site will help you.

What are the benefits of link building?

Here are some of the main benefits:

1. Following a link is one of the most popular ways for people to find new sites. If a site or a writer that you respect gives a link to further resources, then because of that respect you're likely to follow it. Therefore, the more inbound links you have to your site, the greater the opportunities for people to find your valuable content.
2. Search engines give sites with good inbound and outbound links a higher ranking. The logic goes that if you provide outbound links to other material you are providing a valuable service: and, if other sites link to you then you must have content of value.
3. By providing links to other material you don't have to re-invent the wheel and create it yourself. In writing this report, we provide lots of links to additional material. We see this as a valuable service to our readers and it also makes good use of the material we collected in researching and developing the report.
4. Having a linking strategy forces you to ask the fundamental question, "Why would anyone want to link to you?" The answer of course is that you provide something of value: you need to be clear about what that value is.
5. Inbound links help to build trust. If people see that a popular or respected site links to you, then their level of trust in what you say and what you offer is likely to be higher.
6. Perhaps most importantly, you become part of a community. In every field of activity on the web there will be a number of key sources. Linking to them and providing valuable content that they can link to will make you a part of a powerful virtual network.