When building links, there are a lot of things to consider. In my experience, it’s a lot more complicated than simply getting as many links as you can, or going for those with high PR. So this list of Best Practices should be helpful when you are link building.

PR isn’t everything. It is an indication of how much link juice a site will pass, but only one of many elements. Just because a site is PR5, doesn’t mean it is good for your campaign.

Acquire a mix of PR. The world wide web is MOSTLY made up of sites with PR lower than 2. Your link profile should match this. If you link to a big PR site, you should probably also links to a lot of low PR sites to go along with it.

Build relevant links. You’re a doctor? Build links on health related sites. You’re a lawyer. Build links on law sites. Or at the very least, something professional. A gambling link on the mommy blog isn’t going to be effective. The search engines won’t give you much credit for links that appear on sites that have nothing to do with your business.

But don’t over-scrutinize relevancy.For example, a dentist should link to any site related to health and medicine – even a link on a site about vision care would be perfectly fine for a dentist. Consider your overall “vertical” (health, construction, shopping, computers) when deciding if a site is relevant enough to link to.

News and business sites are great“generic” sites when you’re struggling to build links on sites related to your category. Everyone reads the news, so just about anyone can link to a news site.

Use city names in your anchor text when promoting locally.

Build in content links when possible. When your links appears in content in a relevant article, it can be much more effective – even if the page itself isn’t that impressive.

Grow the links slowly. Depending on how many backinks your site already has, build a small percentage each week.

Avoid site wide links- especially sites with over 100 pages, unless your site already has thousands of links.

Don’t expect immediate results. Typically it takes 30/60/90 days to see results.

Don’t swap out links a lot.Even if a link has lost some PR, if it is relevant and old, it is still adding value to your backlink profile.

Anchor Text Best Practices:

  1. Use Brand Anchors: “www.davidselectronics” or “Davids Electronics” instead of “Electronics”
  2. Use a variety of keywords as anchor text: “Camera Accessories”, “Tablet PCs”, “Solar Gadgets”
  3. Use before and after text: “Buy RC Helicopters Online”
  4. Use unrelated anchors: “Click here”
  5. Point approximately 50% of links to the home page and 50% to the keyword-specific interior pages.
    (i.e. www.davidselectronics.com/computer_accessories.htm)
More anchor text strategies.

Lots of good stuff here too: Link Building S’cool

Thanks for reading.

Follow my updates on facebook and twitter.

David McBee