A linking strategy is a plan for building appropriate inbound links to your site and helps you achieve your overall objectives (usually it is increased Google Page Rank).

To start, you must have properly built websites with good content and with a good collection of valuable outbound links for your site visitors. Next you want relevant links from other Web sites. These sites should be carefully selected, because many easy to get incoming links are simply useless when it comes to building your site's search engine ranking. In fact, some links may damage your effort to get good ranking. A proper Linking strategy is not something you should underestimate.

It's difficult, but worth of your time

Building incoming links without a carefully thought out strategy is the simplest way to a disaster. Why? A blind quest for links can lead to dozens of incoming links from link farms. These sites are dangerous to your quest for improved ranking because most popular search engines ban these farms as well as sites linked to them.

This is especially true with Google, but other big search engines also hate link farms. They are worthless links and don't add any content or value to your site or the internet.

Today link quality is more important that quantity. Do not concentrate on just getting links… instead spend your time getting quality, relevant links. One or two inbound links from renowned sites is more worth than dozens from unknown, low-traffic sites.

The basic principle of linking strategy is: create lots of good content, link to great content and great content will link to you.

A good tactic is to find sites that are relevant to your and write the Webmaster a letter. Yes, a real, honest to goodness old fashioned letter. He doesn't get many of those from other Webmasters, so your request for a link will carry added weight.

You can find the names and addresses of most Website owners by spending a little time doing "whois" searches. Get in the habit of writing three for four letters a day and in a few weeks you just might have a linking miracle on your hands.

Self-propelled mechanism of linking strategy

An effective linking strategy can move your site up from the deep within the search engine rankings, it's true, but don't get obsessed with your website rank. Proper linking strategy is only one aspect of your online marketing strategy. You have to decide how much time you should invest in maintaining relationships with other websites and how much effort is allocated to other aspects of your online activity (updating the content, improving navigation on website).

Do not concentrate only on linking. Instead, monitor your results and make corrections to your marketing strategy as necessary. If your strategy is sound the natural momentum of the World Wide Web will take over and your linking popularity will grow. And that means that your linking strategy was well thought out and executed.

Mark Walters lists sources of free and fee links as will as linking software and utilites at http://www.LinkingUniverse.com

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