Getting Links in Search Engine Optimisation :: What works, what doesn't

Today I had a discussion with a client about link building that illuminated some aspects of Search Engine Optimisation that seems to be causing some confusion out there.

My client said that he didn’t need link building as he had a great product and would be able to get lots of people to link to his page in exchange for a link back. That might be so, but if it were that easy, wouldn’t everyone be at the top?

There was a time a little while ago when links that went two ways (you link to a site and they link to you) were valued by search engines. Link building was far easier back in those halcyon days, but then so was Tomb Raider and sneaking into the local cinema! These days, two way (reciprocal) links are not valued nearly as much as links that go one way, as they look like – and most likely are - a favour between friends. “You link to me and I’ll link to you”. Essentially this isn’t as good as a one way link which is essentially saying “I don’t care if you link back to my site. You’re so great that I’m going to link to you anyway!” A one way link is the internet equivalent of strong word-of-mouth recommendation.

So just having one of these ‘one-way’ links to your site becomes even more valuable than negotiating fifty reciprocal links. Of course, this all depends on who the linking site is. In some cases, a link from the wrong site can send your PageRank backwards.

Just as in the real-world, we are more likely to patronage a business we’ve heard strong unbiased feedback about, but are less likely to see that recommendation as unbiased if we knew the recommendation was a sponsored arrangement. Unbiased, relevant, one way links are the best way of passing that concept into the world of the search engines and is a very powerful mechanism for increasing

So even if my customer had the time to write the very best, most interesting and up to date content, he is going to need one way links if he ever wants to make a splash online in the search engines.