Link building is one of the most powerful methods currently available to achive high search engine positions however the service is riddled with unscrupulous companies offering ‘link building’ very inexpensively.  In some cases the work is not done at all, in some the work is done very badly and in the worst cases the work undertaken has resulted in Google blacklisting websites from their search results.  See below as to how and why link building works.

What is link building?

When we discuss link building we mean the process of increasing the number of web links (hyperlinks) from other websites to your own.  Ideally links from other sites should be industry/subject/greographically related.  The most important thing when link building is that the link text or ‘Anchor Text’ which is the words that users click on to follow the link contains the keywords you are trying to achive higher rankings for.  For example if we wanted to come up nice and high for the term ‘devon web design‘ we would make this phrase a link to our website.  In time and with enough links built Google particularly will start to make a relation between this term and our website so that when a usersearches for devon web design google automatically chooses to display our website.  In general if the site you are linking form is related to your industry and if it is a popular website itslef the link you get from it will carry more weight.

In the link examples above we have linked the devon web design term to our own home page of this website, this is called internal linking and thi salso helps with search engine optimisaiton for this term albeit to a lesser extent.

How much does link building cost?

This is a question that can not be answered quickly or easily.  In reality link building once started needs to become an integral and regular part of your intenet marketing strategy.  We can advice you on a monthly budget to set for link building and within that budget we will build as many links as possible on an ongoing basis.

How long does it take to work?

Once links are built we need to wait for google to visit the sites where the link appears and create the ‘relationship’ we discussed above.  In general link building will start to have noticable/significant effects after 8 – 12 weeks.