Link Building Articles

Don’t Believe These 4 SEO Linking Theories
The Google Penguin update may have been years ago now, but it’s had a lasting impression on website owners, especially those that were hit with a penalty. To some, “link building” has become a dirty word and they try to stay away from it. The problem with that approach is that inbound links re...

Follow These Rules When Adding Outbound Links to Your Site
In the SEO world, all the attention seems to be on inbound linking, or obtaining links from other websites that point to your website. This is for good reason since it’s an important search engine ranking signal (one of the top 3 ranking signals, in fact). However, there’s another type of linkin...

Want to Earn Natural Inbound Links? Do These Things Now
There are essentially two ways to generate inbound links. 1. You spend time scouring the web and actively look for inbound linking opportunities, network with other website owners, and take an action (write a guest blog post, submit to a directory, post a blog comment, etc.) that will generate an in...

Yes, Social Media Matters for SEO Link Building
If someone told you that social media doesn’t matter for SEO link building purposes, they’re wrong. While it’s true that links shared in social media are nofollowed and aren’t directly growing your SEO link portfolio or influencing the search engine algorithms, an active social media presenc...

Outbound Linking Best Practices for SEO
When SEO linking is discussed, the focus is usually on inbound links, or links on other websites that are pointing to your website. Inbound links are a ranking factor since they convey trust and authority to the search engines. What usually doesn’t get as much attention is outbound linking, or lin...

4 Steps of an Efficient Link Building Campaign
Link building is a time-consuming process, but it’s a worthwhile one, since inbound links pointing to your website remain an important search engine ranking factor. The key to successful link building is to take an organized, strategic approach. Here are 4 important steps towards an efficient link...

What to Know About Link Building if You’re New to SEO
If you’re just getting started with SEO and doing some research, you’ll likely see the phrase “link building” used a lot. While link building remains an important part of SEO, how you go about link building has changed over time and a lot of the tactics you’ll see mentioned are no longer r...

5 Things to Understand About Link Building
If you’re new to SEO, there’s a good chance you’re a little confused about link building. That’s because there’s a lot of information out there, but so much of it is now outdated. What hasn’t changed, however, is that inbound links pointing to your site are a search engine ranking signal...

The Hard Work That’s Behind Natural Links
Inbound links are important for SEO because they remain a top search engine ranking factor. Inbound links pass trust from one site to the next and convey relevancy to the search spiders. You’ll hear that the best links to earn are “natural” links, or inbound links that occur naturally over tim...

Want to Earn Natural Links? Here’s What You Need
Actively seeking out new inbound link opportunities remains an important part of an SEO program. However, some of the best links are the ones that are earned naturally, when another website owner chooses to link over to your website because they find value in its content. Here’s what’s needed in...

Link Building Opportunities That Are Still Relevant Today
Link building has undergone many facelifts in recent years. That is, if you’re following a white hat strategy. There are plenty of tactics that are no longer effective and can even harm a site, but there are also plenty that are still relevant today. If you’re shying away from link building alto...

Today’s SEO Link Building Best Practices
Despite what you may have heard, link building is still an important part of SEO. That’s because the search engines still use a website’s inbound link portfolio as a ranking factor. The more high-quality, relevant links a site has, the better. However, it’s true that link building has drastica...

How to Tell if a Link Will Be Beneficial to Your SEO Program
At a very high level, SEO really comes down to two things; the quality of your website content and the quality of your inbound links (links to your website that exist on other websites). If your content is well-optimized, it can appear in the search engines. And links that point to web pages on your...

3 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Earning Natural Links
Inbound links are still considered to be one of the top SEO ranking factors, which is why link building should remain a priority. Of course, link building has changed. The quality of inbound links is much more important than the quantity of inbound links. And when it comes to link quality, a link th...

How to Research New Link Building Opportunities
Link building isn’t hard. It’s just time consuming. And what typically takes the most time during the process is the research, or actually finding new link opportunities. That’s why it’s so important to be organized so that you aren’t essentially re-doing the same work over and over, which...

How to Evaluate an Inbound Link Opportunity
Along with the quality of your website content, inbound links are one of the most important ranking factors that the search engines consider. Inbound links, or links to your website on other websites, essentially help tell the story of your website to the search engines. It shows them what your webs...

Making the Case for Nofollowed Links
There are two types of inbound links: followed and nofollowed. In the world of SEO, followed links are “followed” by the search engine spiders and affect PageRank and domain authority. Nofollowed links include html code (rel="nofollow") on the back end that tell Google not to follow a link, or a...

The Easiest Way to Gain Inbound Links
Taking a white hat (Google approved) approach to SEO link building is hard work. It’s a manual process of finding relevant websites that have link opportunities, such as industry/local business directories and industry blogs that accept guest submissions. The days of paying for links for SEO or ex...

6 Things to Analyze to Determine the Value of a Link
An important part of SEO is link building. It’s a manual process of looking for inbound link opportunities on other websites. A link opportunity can be a directory listing, profile page, sponsorship link, partner link, or guest post, among others. These inbound links get crawled by the search engi...

Marketers: Are Your Online Passwords in Order?
This post isn’t about SEO directly, but it’s a topic that is relevant to all online marketers, including SEOs. An important component of online marketing (or any marketing, really) is to expand the reach of your brand and to be found wherever target audience members are. Online, it means setting...

Link Building Blunders That Will Set Your SEO Campaign Back
SEO informed website owners know to stay away from spammy, low-quality links and that it’s the quality of their inbound links that matters more than the quantity. A huge inbound link portfolio means nothing unless all of the links are from well-respected, authoritative industry websites. However, ...

Outbound Linking Guidelines to Follow
When it comes to SEO, website owners are so concerned about generating inbound links that they sometimes forget that on the opposite side of the spectrum, outbound links matter, too. Yes, it’s important to generate inbound links because they instill search engine trust in a website, but outbound l...

Don’t Forget to Ask for These Links
Building links for an SEO program has become more and more challenging as the years have gone on and the search engines have become stricter with what types of links actually pass on any authority. The best types of links are those that appear naturally, when another website owner finds the content ...

Ask Yourself These Questions Before Pursuing a Link
Inbound links pointing to your website play an important role in determining where your website appears in search. The search engines use these links to determine the trust and authority of your website. Earning inbound links naturally is the ultimate goal but it’s also in your best interest to se...

If You’re a Marketer You Can Be a Link Builder
Some marketers are apprehensive of the secret world of SEO link building. The truth is, there’s really no magical secret to link building and it’s not that complicated. If you are a marketer, you can be a link builder. Today’s link building is a manual process, much like any other form of mark...

Want Natural Links? Here’s How to Get Them
“Natural inbound links” is a common phrase in the SEO link building world. Natural links are links that occur “naturally”; another website owner decides to link over to your website on their own website. You don’t ask for the link or create the link yourself by contributing content/a direc...

How to Get Natural Links? It’s No Secret
Inbound links pointing to a website remain a top ranking signal for Google. Having high-quality, relevant websites linking over to your website is a sign of trust which is why an important part of SEO is to actively seek out inbound link opportunities. However, this type of link building is somewhat...

Broken Link Building How-To Guide
Broken links happen for many reasons – websites go defunct, URL changes are made and pages are removed during redesigns and the webmaster forgets to 301 redirect, etc. The end result is millions of broken links out there that are not only causing bad user experiences, but are also missed SEO oppor...

Don’t Miss These Easy Link Building Opportunities
Link building as a whole isn’t easy. That’s because a big link building focus is on generating natural inbound links that are earned by publishing great, linkable content. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some easier ways to get inbound links. There are plenty of “low hanging f...

3 Things You Must Do to Earn Natural Links
Inbound links (or links from other websites pointing to your website) are one of the top Google search ranking criteria. While an important part of a search engine optimization campaign is to actively seek out link building opportunities, it’s also necessary to take steps in order to increase the ...

Follow These Steps to Generate the Best Possible Inbound Links
Inbound links pointing to your website are one of the top 3 Google ranking factors. Clearly, link building remains an important part of an SEO campaign. Link building can include specifically seeking out link building opportunities but it also includes doing things that will attract natural links ov...

Link Building Fundamentals are Marketing Fundamentals
Despite search engine optimization being a legitimate online marketing practice for many years now, there are still plenty of marketing folks who don’t quite understand it. Some even fear it due to fear of the unknown. All they hear about are link warnings and penalties from the search engines and...

3 Things that Generate More Inbound Links to Content
Publishing great website content is important for a number of reasons. For SEO purposes, it’s necessary in order to rank for specific keywords and to generate natural inbound links that help to convey trust (and determine rank) in the search engines. That’s why it’s so important to not only pu...

The Low-Hanging Fruit of Link Building
Link building has changed drastically over the years. It used to be, get as many links as you can from wherever you can. Then the Google Penguin update came around and slapped websites for doing exactly that. Now, the focus is on quality, not quantity. It’s true that finding quality links can be c...

Things to Consider Before Accepting a Link Opportunity
While some parts of the search engine algorithm remain a mystery, there’s one thing that we all know for sure: inbound links to your website are a ranking signal. It’s one of the top three ranking signals, in fact. This means that generating inbound links to your site remains critically importan...

Get Over Link Building Fears and Stop Making These Mistakes
We know that inbound links are one of the top ranking signals. They establish relevancy in a niche and help to convey trust which is why link building has always been a part of an SEO program. However, after Google’s continued crack down on spammy links and the sites they point to, website owners ...

4 Types of Links to Pursue Right Now
Inbound links remain an important search engine ranking factor. They help to convey how trusted a company/brand and its website are. Yet, many companies are missing out on some of the “easier” links. As long as an inbound link is relevant and coming from a legitimate website, it contributes posi...

What to Keep in Mind About SEO Link Building
While SEO best practice has certainly changed over the years, one thing remains constant – inbound links to your website are important. But not just any links – high quality, relevant links. If you want to increase your organic search traffic you must be link building. Here are 5 things to keep ...

6 Easy Link Building Opportunities to Capitalize On
Despite what you may have heard, not all link building is difficult. Sure, link building might take some time and effort but there are some link building opportunities that are rather easy to capitalize on. Here are 6 “low-hanging fruit” link opportunities you don’t want to miss out on: Pre...

Be Wary of Link Building Opportunities
Let’s be honest. White hat link building is tough. We know we need inbound links but also know that Google’s link building rules are strict. It’s a sort of catch-22. That’s why it’s always tempting when a website owner reaches out with a link opportunity. “The site looks halfway decent,...

Build Relationships to Build Links
Editorial links (that are the result of a website owner choosing to include a link on their website because it will be valuable to their audience) are the most valuable links to have. That’s because they will stand the test of time and are algorithm update-proof. The search engines will never pena...

Is Your Website Worthy of a Natural Link?
Link building remains an important component of an SEO program, since inbound links still convey trust to the search engines and remain part of the search algorithm. However, link building has shifted away from the quantity of inbound links and instead focuses on the quality of inbound links. And wh...

Benefits of Running a Link Audit
Every site owner should run a link audit on their site at least once a year. When conducting a full link audit, it’s important to visit each and every link in your link portfolio no matter how many links there may be! For some site owners, this may mean you have thousands of links to check out. In...

Your Link Building Activities Need to Be Relevant!
At Brick Marketing, we are advocates of strictly white hat link building. That means that we believe that SEO campaigns need to play by the rules set forth by the search engines (as best as we can understand them anyway) and avoid anything that might land our clients' websites in hot water. There ar...

Save Your Link Portfolio with a 301 Redirect!
Are you rebuilding or redesigning your website? If so, then you'll want to make sure that you keep your SEO partner informed for several reasons. One of the most important of these is because you will want to make sure that you keep your hard-won link portfolio intact as you make any changes to your...

What to Do if You Have Bad Inbound Links
Perhaps one of the most important ways that the search engines determine the authority of your website is by analyzing the inbound links that point to it, which is why white hat SEO link building is such an important part of an SEO strategy. While website owners are building inbound links it’s imp...

Link Building Needs to Come Naturally
It's true that link building is still an important ranking factor. However, this is only true depending on how the links were obtained. They need to come naturally, otherwise they could do more harm than good. Ever since the Penguin and Panda updates, Google has been cracking down on poor quality l...

Building a Natural Link Profile Is a Constant Effort
Link building has changed a lot over the past few years, especially after the Google Penguin update. What this means is that Google has gotten extremely picky about what's acceptable and what isn't. In this case, the more cautious you are, the better. In fact, actively building links can get you in...

Black Hat SEO Tactic to Avoid: Link Schemes
Link schemes are a black hat SEO tactic that should absolutely be avoided. As a white hat full service SEO firm, we absolute avoid link schemes and you should too! Here's more information on what they are and what you can do instead: What Link Schemes Are According to Google, link schemes are defi...

What to Know About White Hat Link Building
Many of the basics of white hat link building has evolved and changed over the past few years. While it is still important to gain links from authority websites, this should be done over a period of time and it absolutely shouldn't be forced. With our full service SEO clients, we always execute a...