What is Link Building?

What is link building?

It is a debate on whether inbound links are the Most important factor in Google’s search algorithm but there is no debate that it is one of the top two. Quantity and quality of links to your website (SEO link building) is vital to your success in being able to have your law firm website show up prominently for searches. Online Attorney Marketing can help you do this, correctly with proven results.

Understanding why this is important is relatively simple when you look at the history of search engines. I like to say that in the “old days” manipulating where your firm website showed up was rather easy. In fact, if I wanted you to rank high for the phrase “Los Angeles Truck Accident Attorney” I would simply type that key phrase in white letters on white background all over your site. No one would see the terms but the search engines and “poof” your website was at the top. If you think about it, that is how all of the gambling websites and pornographic sites would show up for searches that had nothing to do with the search someone was making. In fact, back in 1998 I remember sitting at a conference that I was going to be speaking at when one of my colleagues was debating with me on the true efficacy of search engines and if they could every really be effective or if they would just be simply “an advertising mechanism where whoever paid the most money would dominate.” Well depending on whom you ask one might say that she was right. Although technically you CANNOT buy your way to the top, if you employ the correct strategies (Pay the right people enough) you can significantly improve your chances of doing that very same thing.

Well along came the emergence of Google. They said that they could build a search experience that would not be controlled by deep pockets. Their idea was that they would provide two types of results

1. One were you could buy your way to the top. Pay Per Click advertising.

2. Two, the websites that were truly the most relevant would be the ones that show up at the top.

In order to do this they knew it required much more than simply looking at the words that someone wrote on their website. Alas…inbound links to someone’s website became important. Their thought was that not all websites are equal.

Take for example the thought of searching for the phrase we used earlier. Which of these websites is more relevant to that search…

Los Angeles Truck Lawyer or Los Angeles Truck Lawyer

When looking at both of these sites to the human eye one seems much more informative while the other simply looks like an advertisement. Did you know that 10 years ago the second site would be deemed the better search results because the first site does NOT just focus on Los Angeles and the second site has more Los Angeles based keywords. Ridiculous right? Well how would a computer program be able to figure this out? The brilliant minds at Google said what a minute. What is the hardest thing to do for anyone marketing a website…….Getting people to find your site! Well if someone is willing to instruct their visitors to look at another site (link to that website) that MUST be an important site for that user. Walla…the importance of linking was born.

In short, websites can “vote” for the most credible websites and web pages by linking to them. The backbone of the search algorithms are based on SEO link building.

In simple terms, link building is a competitive process that requires constant diligence and progress to stay ahead of your competition. If you are not gaining links through SEO link building, then someone else is, and you will invariably fall behind as a result.

Our next post we will talk about how to find:

• The right quantity of links

• The right quality of links

• Lastly relevant links