Link building is a tough business and many webmaster use a technique known as link baiting as part of their search engine optimization strategies. Many webmasters who are new to search engine optimization may wonder if link baiting is white-hat or black-hat in the eyes of Google.

Google’s approach to links, while a little complicated in their approach, can be summarized fairly simply. If links are natural and not in any way ‘bought’, ’sold’ or ‘farmed’ then they will pass muster. Search engine optimization strategies that attempt to develop natural links will generally not face any penalties. The optimum word is ‘natural’. How you gain these natural links is the hard part.

Link baiting is a process where your content is written in such a way that it encourages others to link to you. In the past the term link bait was generally applied to content that has been specifically written to attract links. These days, any good article may get labeled as ‘good link bait post’. Good search engine optimization strategies would see every article trying to fall into that later category.

Examples of link baiting include lists, ‘top ten …..’; funny cartoons; campaigns, ‘World…….Day’; and in recent times videos. Some blog owners resort to competitions where a post asks others to write about the competition with a link back the original post. It would be interesting to see Google’s take on this. There is a reward offered in exchange for a link. Search engine optimization strategies often focus on how content, particularly keyword rich content, can be written to encourage others to link - should this be called ‘link baiting’ or just plain good SEO strategies.

Link baiting is a generic term these days to describe any content that encourages linking. Any search engine optimization strategy that works within acceptable limits is not legitimate, it is ethical and should be every webmasters goal.

Reciprocal links are, for some search engine optimization experts, still in the too hard basket when it comes to their effect on your rankings. Some believe it helps, if only a little while others believe they hurt and are at best, ignored and at worst, penalized by search engines. So what about three way links?

Three way links are not new, in fact they have been around for almost as long search engine optimization strategies. Whichever way you look at them, three way links are still reciprocal links and if search engines such as Google look down on them, then you can bet they know when you are using them.

A thread on Webmasterworld recently discussed the use of three way links and the responses were quite varied. One particular response appealed to me and is probably closer to my thoughts than many of the others:

Google most probably considers a certain percentage of straightforward reciprocals in your linking profile as part of a natural pattern… and good quality reciprocals, if they’re appropriate for the user and not excessive, will probably help you.

But Google is also big on “intent,” and is less tolerant about obvious attempts to game the algo. That’s what triangular links are. It would be hard to look at them any other way.

Intent is the real key when it comes to links, linking and search engine optimization. There are going to be times when it is mutually beneficial for two sites to exchange links. Certain websites will naturally complement each other, for example, a paint supply website and a paint brush website. It would be natural for these two sites to link to each other.

Triangular links would not necessarily complement each other. I am sure if I thought hard enough I could find an example, but they would be few and far between. Using triangular links as part of your search engine optimization strategy will generally be seen as an attempt to game the system.

If the search engines cannot currently detect them, it wont be long and they will. Rather than trying to work the system, you are far better off building links where they naturally occur and putting all your search engine optimization efforts into gaining one way links.

An upfront post from Andy Beard regarding comment spam raised an interesting question. Should you use comments as part of your link building strategies?

Andy has a tough policy on spam (or perceived spam) and if you get sin binned once, your most likely sin binned for ever. His policy is fair enough however if you are intelligent and subtle with your comments then you may well find blogs owners leaving your comments in place, thus providing you with a another tick in your link building campaign.

To gain the most out of any link building campaign through commenting, you need to follow certain unwritten rules, almost the opposite of Andy’s spam list. To get the best value, you need to select blogs or sites that are closely related to your products, services or keywords.

Comments need to add value to the content that you are commenting on. Value is the keyword here. Provide supporting evidence for the content, or argue against the content, either way leaving a sense of authority on the subject matter.

Finally, don’t keyword spam. If you are going to include a link within the comment, don’t use keywords that are irrelevant. The best approach is often to link your name. Possibly not as valuable as a keyword, but the comment is more likely to remain than if a keyword had been used.

Most website owners (or bloggers) look at two areas before deleting or accepting the comment. The first is the spam factor - most spam comments can be picked up fairly quickly. The second area is the value of the comment. Get past these two areas and your linking building strategy has become successful.

Link building through the comments area is a logical place to gain good links. The comments section is a public forum with the site owner as moderator. Provide value and the moderator will appreciate your participation. Create spam and your comments may be forever sin binned. Link building through comments is easy, provides a quick link back to your site, and provides you with a great opportunity to leave your opinions.

Do it right and you will develop an authority within that community. Do it wrong and you may find your reputation tarnished. The benefits of a link building campaign using comments is smart and time effective and can help your search engine optimization efforts.

Or do you even have any outbound links? Should you?

Whether or not you have any outbound links depends a great deal on your editorial philosophy. Some old-style SEOs say that you shouldn’t. Others say that you should. I think it really matters on your goals and your style.

If you do choose to include outbound links, you should start by choosing links that make you look good. Don’t use any other kind of links. That is, your link partners should be chosen not on whether or not they are linking to you but on whether or not they provide your visitors with any real value. If you create outbound links that give value to your visitors then you will be seen as an authority in your field and you are more likely to receive inbound links that benefit you and that are given by other authorities within your niche. That’s when you know that you’ve arrived.

Here’s another way of thinking about it. Many webmasters will not link to you if every link on your website is self-serving. And, trust me, they can tell. But if you have selfless links that point to the other sources online within your niche then it appears that you are not simply promoting yourself but promoting your niche, even if it leads your visitors to other places online. That’s how you become an authority, and authority sites are well liked by a lot of different people. They tend to linked to more often and the links are valuable links. Those links increase your PageRank and further serve to increase your authority within your niche. Look at it as a sort of Web karma. Build your own authority with outbound links.

These days you have to get creative with your link building. I mean, paid links will get you in trouble. Links from the same web site over and over again will eventually cease to provide you any new benefits. Setting up an off site blog was a great way to build inbound links for a while, and it still is with Yahoo!, but that benefit is fading. Article marketing is still effective, but who knows how long that will last?

When it comes to link building, especially with Google, you have to really work hard to get good links. Well, now there is another tool that you can use to help build some quality inbound links to your website, and possibly even get new traffic. The website is Yedda.

Yedda, like Yahoo! Answers and similar sites, allows you to ask questions or answer questions that others have posed and link back to the source. Think about that. Someone asks a question about something within your niche and you know the answer. You answer the question then link to a page on your website that provides more detail. Instant inbound link.

Affiliate programs are some of the best sources of inbound links online. By providing your affiliates with a link back to your website, you increase your link popularity, which in turn leads to higher search engine rankings. It can also increase your sales.

Since many of your affiliates will be people in your niche the inbound links from your affiliate program will pass search engine relevancy tests. Also, if some of your affiliates have high PageRank because they are trusted sites within your niche then that will give you an additional boost. And get a bunch of those types of links … well, the story just keeps getting better. That’s why affiliate programs can be such good sources of links.

While it is true that affiliate program links are good links, you don’t want to rely entirely on affiliate links. You also want to build links in other ways. The key to inbound link building is to be consistent over time and build solid links through a strategy that encourages other webmasters to link to you freely without you requesting them to. A blog can do that in so many ways. But so too can article marketing, forum posting, and other forms of link building and conversational marketing.

An article SiteProNews got my attention when I read a headline about the best 3 - count ‘em, three! - SEO tips for this year. Here’s what the author suggested:

• Subscribe to Google Alerts
• Search Engine Optimize your 404 page
• Build links - seriously

Notice he didn’t say “optimize your content.” I wonder why.

Seriously, everyone serious about search engine optimization knows that optimizing your content is important, but can you over-optimize? Can you under-optimize it? Can you optimize it optimally?

It’s not a joke. You can use too many keywords for your content pages. You can also use too few. And you do it just right and still not get ranked well for your important keywords. That’s because keywords are not the only elements the search engines look for in order to rank your website against your competitors. Other factors, which you don’t have control over, are the age of your website and the age of your competitors’ websites, how well your competition does at optimizing their websites, and other related ranking factors concerning your competition. Let’s face it, Search Engine Optimization is competition.

I think Google Alerts is a wonderful tool. I also like the suggestion about optimizing your 404 page, but even if you don’t, it’s not a deal breaker. Neither of those two suggestions will make or break you. Even mediocre content won’t necessarily kill your business. But not building links will.

There is a lot of emphasis on optimizing your content, and rightfully so, but truth be told, you can spend too many hours anally going over every word to get the best optimization you can get when you could be doing something much more productive with your time - like building links. You can actually write mediocre content and build links to your website and see your search positions rise just on that alone. Rarely will you ever see your search positions rise on the basis of improving your site’s content without doing anything else. If you do, it’s likely because your content sucked in the first place.

So what it really boils down to is this: Would you rather have mediocre content and darned good links or kick a$$ content and hardly no links at all? As for me, I’d rather have awesome inbound links and mediocre content. Though it can’t be said enough that content that doesn’t sell, now matter how well optimized it is, isn’t going to do you much good at all even if you have the best linking strategy in the world.

There are two things that good links do for your website. They’re both easy to measure and easy to accomplish, but it is time consuming to do it the right way.

Links can increase your search positioning - i.e. your rank in the search engines as part of your Search Engine Optimization. But it can also drive traffic to your website. Neither of these are really hard, but it can complicated trying to figure out what type of links you really need.

When it comes to traffic, there are two ways to think about it. You can go for quantity, in which case you simply try to get as many links as you can in as many places as you can. The danger with this is that you could get pegged as a spammer and your Search Engine Optimization benefits will decline. The upside is, if you do it right, you’ll get a lot of traffic. And you don’t necessarily need link juice in order to make this happen. Nofollow links work just as well as relevant links from high PageRank sites. If you are link building for traffic then don’t worry too much about the Search Engine Optimization.

On the other hand, to get the best links you’ll need to concentrate at least some of your efforts on building relevant links from high PageRank sites. By increasing your link popularity, you essentially are telling people that you are serious about building a brand. That link popularity will translate into higher search engine positions, which in turn leads to more traffic.

It makes sense, then, that if you want more traffic and higher search positioning then you’ll work on increasing the trust factor of your website and seek quality links. While quality is better than quantity, quantity is better than nothing and quality + quantity is best of all. So figure out a way to get as many really good links as you can and keep trying until you get it right.

Spend just a little bit of time in an Search Engine Optimization forum and you’re bound to hear someone talking about link bait - what it is, how do you do it, why it’s important, when it’s necessary, etc. etc. Well, there is link bait hype and then there is link bait tripe. But either way, link bait doesn’t have to be difficult. You don’t have to spend countless hours coming up with new and creative ways to get the blog next door to link to you. Sometimes all you have to do is make it simple.

Link bait comes in many ways and shades. Some people are going to link to you no matter what. Others are going to link to you because they like what you are doing. And some bloggers just won’t link to you. Period. What are you going to do? Twist their arms?

When you create a linkable blog post then the links will start coming. All it takes is a simple list. Come up with 10 things you like about an important concept in your industry. Or maybe 10 things you don’t like. A good way to get people to link to you is to list 25 of the most important people in your industry. Then send an e-mail to each of those people and let them know that they made your list. If anyone will link to you, they will. Then, their friends will link to you because the think it’s cool that their friend is on your list.

Link bait isn’t hard. Sometimes it’s the simplest things in the world that helps…

Jane Copeland wrote an interesting blog post about StumbleUpon traffic. I like what she has to say and I didn’t know that StumbleUpon revisited a website more than once. That’s good to know.

While StumbleUpon doesn’t give Search Engine Optimization link juice, it can increase your chances of getting link juice if you play it right. What you want is to encourage others to link to you, but how do you do that? If people are always Stumbling and not linking then are you really getting any benefit? I guess the key is to appeal to people who have not yet discovered your site and might want to link to you because 1) they really like what you offer and 2) they are in the same niche as you.

I’ve found that the best way to ensure that you keep targeted traffic Stumbling your sites is to use StumbleUpon in conjunction with other networking sites. For instance, BlogCatalog has a great networking tool in its groups and there are several groups devoted to social media and StumbleUpon, in particular. But those are general groups. While you want to network through those groups, you also want to network with others who blog and own websites within your niche. By networking with people within your niche at Facebook, BlogCatalog, and other such networking sites and asking them to Stumble your website or blog, you increase your chances of getting extra Search Engine Optimization link juice. Those are the people most likely to not only Stumble you, but link to you from their blog and website as well.

Back in the old days, when walking to school was uphill both ways, forums were a great source of inbound links for a website. You could visit several forums a day and leave several posts at each forum and be credited with an inbound link at every one. That seems to have gone by the wayside these days as most forums now nofollow all their links. But not all forums do, which is the point of my post for this morning.

Anyone who posts in forums solely for the link juice is doing it for the wrong reason. That’s not the real benefit of forum posting. It never has been. Even when every forum online gave link juice that wasn’t the primary benefit; it was ancillary.

The real benefit to forum posting has always been the relationship building aspect of being a member of the community. Forums are discussion groups. They are places where people go to get specialized knowledge and information from others with similar interests. It’s a friend-helping-a-friend platform and you always have people with different levels of skill chatting with each other about philosophy, technique, tools of the trade, etc.

As you interact with other members of the group, you are allowed to provide links to resources (even your own), and can even put in signature links with all of your posts to let people know what business you are in and allow them to visit your website. Again, though, not all forums allow signature links. Some forums make you pay for privilege.

What happened?

Well, in short, spam is what happened. As soon as word got out that forums were a good place to get link juice, every Search Engine Optimization expert and Internet marketer in the world flocked to the forums and flooded the message boards with their “Come to my website and see the fabulous new widget I’ve built for people who never visit this forum” type comments. Yes, without concern for the character of the board or the interests of the people in the forums, Internet marketers only left blatant marketing messages and didn’t bother to be useful or join relevant conversations. This unnerved a lot of regular forum participants who began to complain to the forum moderators.

To cut down on spam, forum moderators did two things. First, they instituted the “nofollow” links policy, which effectively cut down on the amount of spam they were getting almost overnight. Secondly, many forums started limiting the lines you could have in your signature link or not allowing signature links at all. In essence, what they were saying was, “If you aren’t here to join and be a part of our community and all you want to do is promote yourself then we aren’t interested in you being here.”

But not all forums went this route. Most did, but some forums still allow signature links and still give link juice. They’re hard to find, but they’re still there. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should run out and look for all the forums that give link juice and start posting marketing messages. It does mean that if you have relevant information that fits for a particular forum and you use decorum in presenting what you have to offer, not only can you realize the benefit of more traffic to your website, but you can also realize a small Search Engine Optimization benefit. My word of caution: Don’t abuse it.

It seems that one way to get links to your website or blog is to create a widget. This is the going thing now and a lot of people are doing it. But are we overdoing it? I mean, will we soon reach a point to where we are over-widgetized? That is, will the widget market be saturated? Will web surfers get tired of all these widgets and finally just decide not to use widgets at all?

There is no shortage of places online where you can go to create your own widgets. If you are a member of some social networks, you can get the network’s API and create a widget to share with others through that system. Some networks that offer widgets include:

• Facebook
• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• MySpace
• Technorati
• BlogCatalog

Almost all of the major social networks now allow you to add a widget to your profile page and you can create one using that network’s API. But there are also standalone widget creation web sites that will allow you to create your own widgets and use on your website, blog, or social networking profile. Some of them are:

• Grazr
• KickApps
• Yourminis.com
• Yahoo! Widgets

It’s really not hard to create a widget, but it can be time consuming if you’ve never done any coding. There is a certain skill involved. But a cool widget can draw people to your website and help you build link popularity that will help your Search Engine Optimization.

There has much fanfare made of link building as part of Search Engine Optimization. In fact, if you Google “website traffic” and “link building” you’ll find that there are only 12,700,000 results for “website traffic” (without the quotes) versus 42,900,000 results for “link building” (again, without the quotes). Judging by these numbers, you’d think that link building is more important. There are some folks who would likely tell you that is the case. I’m not one of them.

Links are valuable. The right links are most valuable. But not all links will provide your website with value. Even if you get a high PR site in your niche to link to you and give you a boost in search engine juice, if that link doesn’t deliver targeted traffic to your website then it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a link.

Traffic makes you money. The best a link can do is push you up a few notches in the search engine results and send you a few leads. It’s up to your website content to close the sale. Without traffic, however, no matter how good your sales content is, you won’t last long online. That’s why it is important to make sure all of the pieces fit together and work together for the common good.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, and some of them involve link building. The two do not necessarily go hand in hand, though often they do.

Here are a few ways you can drive traffic to your website:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Article Marketing
• Blog
• Social Bookmarking
• Reciprocal Linking
• Link Buying
• Directory Submissions
• Online Advertising
• Press Release Distribution
• Social Networking
• Pay Per Click Advertising
• Viral Video Marketing
• Podcasting

And that’s not all. There are as many ways to drive traffic to your website as there are link building methods. Actually, even more. In terms of Search Engine Optimization benefit, link building is far more important, but in terms of ROI, traffic is what will pay your bills - if, and it’s a big if, your website is capable of converting. So which is more important? Link building or traffic? You tell me.

There’s a great article over at The Link Spiel on link building. Debra Mastaler has some great thing to say in this article. Here’s a gem that I found quite intriguing:

Generating links through the social networks can be a crapshoot, you get what you get. Unlike traditional linking, you can’t pinpoint where those links will come from or control which sites to target.

So the question is, are the links generated through social media campaigns any less efficient?

That’s a great question. Debra goes on to provide some useful insight into the question, but I do have some thoughts.

First, link building is not as difficult as some people will have you believe. The hard part is knowing what kind of links have the best value. Not all links are created equal. Because of that, social media links and links garnered from social media marketing can be difficult to measure. Every site has its own challenges to overcome, but there are benefits as well. A few social sites offer their own link juice:

• Digg
• Propeller
• Furl
• Techorati

To name a few. Others, however, don’t:

• del.icio.us
• StumbleUpon
• Facebook
• Almost all of the rest

Like article marketing, though, you shouldn’t be using social media to gain links from the social media sites. Social media is not an end unto itself. It is the means to an end. You therefore have to see through the media to the other side and view your link building in terms of who you can reach through the social media sites that you are targeting.

Some industries, for instance, have niche social media sites that you can target. Your target market likely hangs out there. Using those sites will likely be more profitable for you than a general site like Digg or StumbleUpon. While you can potentially get a lot of traffic from the big social media sites, much of that traffic will likely be untargeted and unqualified. And, yes, you may get some links from those sites, but will those links help you in the long run?

Link building through social media marketing, as Debra Mastaler points out, is not like traditional link building. You can’t see it that way. It is important to count the costs of your time and investment before you go leaping and bounding into the never, never land of social media. There are benefits, to be sure, but those benefits, like everything else, should be carefully measured.

You’ve heard it said often enough: “Content is King.” But is it?

Second-rate Search Engine Optimization experts and followers all over the Internet will repeat this mantra over and over again as if it is true and add such silly wisdom - let’s call it Sisdom - as “If content is king then link building is queen.” Yeah, right.

Let me tell you why this is all wrong. Any schmuck can put content on a web page. In fact, a web page is not a web page without content. Try putting up a blank white screen with nothing but your html and body tags. Call that content and every goober with a hat on will laugh at you. (The goobers without hats will stare blankly.)

I’ve seen people build a five page website and just wait. “Yep, built a website! The business will come any time. I’m juu-uuu-uust a-waitin’. God bless my soul.”

OK, I’m being silly. But you know it happens. People build a website - they’ve got content - and nothing happens. Some king.

Content without links will get you nothing. I’m not saying start building inbound links and all your problems will be solved. But I am saying that you can take any crappy site with content, build links to it and at least improve your Google juice. Content alone will not ensure you any rankings. It won’t ensure you any sales. It won’t ensure you any traffic. But put one strategically placed link somewhere else on the Web and point it back to your crappy site with content and you’ll likely increase your traffic. You’ll likely also increase your PageRank and Google’s algorithms will jump for joy because they found something of value related to your content - even though it’s not on your crappy website.

Now, that’s how links are more important than content. Even a bad link - not a spam link or a “bad neighborhood” link (I’m talking about an ineffectual milquetoast link) - can increase the Search Engine Optimization juice on your lousy content website. Oooooh, but take that lousy content and rewrite it. I don’t just mean change a few verbs and rearrange your keywords. I mean really rewrite it. Rewrite it from scratch so that your content shines - like Patton’s combat boots. Spit polish your content until you can see your own reflection. Don’t do anything. Now you’ve got a website with valuable content - and that’s what will make a difference.

Lesson: Content is not king. Good content is king.

Inbound links to a lousy content site with crappy content is better than a website with bad content and no links. But take that website and make your content good and your good content site without links will outperform a bad content site with all the links in the world. Add links to it, however, and you’ve got one hell of a website to be proud of. And it will make you money as part of your Search Engine Optimization efforts. I think that’s what Rand Fishkin meant when he said that links are more important than content. To that I wholeheartedly agree.