Can someone explain link building to me please

[PlanetEarth]

I have read the thread about link building and am still confused about what exactly it is.
Is it for example, this site has people giving advice and having their website on their signature, or is it if people ask for advice and another poster says "here is a good site"
Does google etc rank you higher if you have more people saying "here is a good site" than someone who has their own site as a signature.
How does google know what is a "quality link" and what is not?
If I am right, how would you get other links other than to pay to advertise on sites or do the above?
Sorry if this question is a bit basic.

[crossdaz]

I have read the thread about link building and am still confused about what exactly it is.
Is it for example, this site has people giving advice and having their website on their signature, or is it if people ask for advice and another poster says "here is a good site"
Does google etc rank you higher if you have more people saying "here is a good site" than someone who has their own site as a signature.
How does google know what is a "quality link" and what is not?
If I am right, how would you get other links other than to pay to advertise on sites or do the above?
Sorry if this question is a bit basic.

The idea is like you say - another site refers to yours because they think there is some good information.
Link building is like pretending this is going on naturally - but isn't.

How does google know the difference - sometimes it's obvious and other times less so. But everyday they get closer to getting it perfect :)

[I, Brian]

Think of it as like a voting system - a link is like a vote to a website - with the caveat that Google tries to determine meaning behind the vote. That means both associating keywords with the vote (according to different ways) as well as seeking to devalue unnatural looking votes. :)

[chrislyons]

How does google know the difference

Boffin Boss goes to Big Boffin Team and says we need to monitor and penalise the people that use link exchange programmes, link buying everything that is not associiated with good quality organic links that is of value to the reader, not the websites, you have as much computing power and other big boffin teams at your disposal if you want them, oh and guess what the daft buggers who are trying to cheat, ask us to index their pages.

I am guessing this is how google know

[RedEvo]

This (http://seo.redevolution.com/linking/) may help you.

d

[dots and spots Jeff]

If you go to a restaurant and you like it, you tell your friends about, you recommend it to them. The more people that recommend a restaurant the better it (probably) is.

If you like a website - or think its good - you tell your friends (readers) about it, by providing a link from your website. Google counts how many people link to a website - the more people that link to it, the more popular - or better - it is and so Google ranks it higher.

Going back to the restaurant analogy. Me, and 10 of my friends, like "Jeff's Jelly Emporium" so we 11 people recommend it. However, the international restaurant critic Egon Ronay prefers "Delicatble Dinners" and so he recommends that. Because he is an authority on food & restaurants, his one recommendation outweighs the 11 recommendations of me and my mates, suggesting that Delicatble Dinners is the better restaurant.

Google works the same way: one link from an authority site (say BBC, for example) will be more beneficial than 10 (or 100 maybe) links from signatures in a forum.

Unfortunately, links have been exploited so now many links are given to a site not because it is a good site, but because someone has paid for that link.

HTH

Jeff

[crossdaz]

Going back to the restaurant analogy. Me, and 10 of my friends, like "Jeff's Jelly Emporium" so we 11 people recommend it. However, the international restaurant critic Egon Ronay prefers "Delicatble Dinners" and so he recommends that. Because he is an authority on food & restaurants, his one recommendation outweighs the 11 recommendations of me and my mates, suggesting that Delicatble Dinners is the better restaurant.




I like that :)

[craigc0302]

You need to get good quality links to your site !

Get someone linking to your site is the best possible way , done by writing good content ( something people will link to )

recipricol linking ( i link with you and you link with me ) as long as its relevant is also good ( not a huge benefit though )

or 3 way linking eg i link to you >>>> you link to someone or another of your sites >>>> and that links back to me thats a 3 way link

Just bare in mind all links you get should have some relevance to what you do !
No point in selling cars and linking to a sunbed shop thats a waste of time !

[1weekSEO]

PlanetEarth - have you tried typing link:www.yoursite.com (http://www.yoursite.com) into Yahoo? This will show links to your site in their 'site explorer' display.

Google will show less but the ones that do show are the higher quality links.

[craigc0302]

again nina you are misinforming people

noone asked how to check your links on a site they are asking what link building is !

Yahoo site explorer shows what links are on a site no what link building is

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

[harryboon]

Just bare in mind all links you get should have some relevance to what you do !
No point in selling cars and linking to a sunbed shop thats a waste of time !

God but how many people still do it lol :)

[craigc0302]

God but how many people still do it lol :)


I know its frightening the links that some people get for there clients !

Thats how i very rarley do seo for clients now i have a few clients but i got sick of tidying up dodgy seos bad jobs lol !

Better doing seo for yourself now :) more money in it !

If your an seo that is :D

[1weekSEO]

again nina you are misinforming people

Again? When was the last time?

noone asked how to check your links on a site they are asking what link building is !

No one asked you to judge a response in a thread.

For someone wanting to learn about link building is, I think it's pretty important to actually see how/what links exist and to demonstrate the tool to find this out

Yahoo site explorer shows what links are on a site no what link building is

I'm pleased you cleared that up.

Not that I take any notice of people with terrible grammar skills anyhow.

[craigc0302]

Im judging your responses on a thread though !
Im assuming you actually sell seo to clients !

I find that quite worrying ... when someone says can you explain link building to me ... they want a simple straight forward answer !

If they wanted to check out how to check links they would have asked that question.

With regards to grammar ! Well me doing my own work and trying to help people out in a forum is my choice and whether i type to fast and make spelling errors on here is irrelevant !

Whether people take on board my point of view again is up to the individual however i have a decent checkable seo record !

Can you say the same ???:cool:

Maybe try informing people with the right info and you might do well !

Finally with regards to you misinforming people i will not link people to other posts you have done this in as its up to them whether to trust what you say !

[Tin]

Guys and Gals

Please refrain from having a public spat on these forums.

I have removed some of the personal comments, please keep this on topic.

Ray

[fiona davies]

Please refrain from having a public spat on these forums.



Ray

Who needs Eastenders when this is going on at 12.00 lunchtime?:)

[PlanetEarth]

Thanks for these replies folks. Becoming a little clearer now. Love the resaurant analagy.
But if you put a link to your site in your signature, does that mean that this increases your ranking in google, particularly if you do many posts.
Or is it if someone on a forum says "this is a good site".
Nina, I clicked on that link that you gave me but I could not find the site explorer display. I would find it useful to be able to type in other sites and find out what sites link on to theirs.
Regards

[fiona davies]

what you need to do is go to yahoo. Once there type in site:www.yoursite.co.uk and press search. you will then be taken to site explorer. There you will see two tabs Pages and Links. You want to click on 'links'. This will show you who is linking to you. You can do this for any site...can be addictive. Most SEO's would perhaps say don't pay too much attention to your competitor's sites as this waists time BUT if they have like a million links and you have 40, it might be an indication of how much work you need to do.
hope this helps

[fisicx]

But if you put a link to your site in your signature, does that mean that this increases your ranking in google, particularly if you do many posts.
Forum signatures have long been devalued so it's unlikey to help your ranking irrespective of the number of forums or number of posts.

[harryboon]

They are out of date for seo, good for getting people to visit your site though

Cheers Harry

[PlanetEarth]

Thanks all.

[1weekSEO]

Thanks for these replies folks. Becoming a little clearer now. Love the resaurant analagy.
But if you put a link to your site in your signature, does that mean that this increases your ranking in google, particularly if you do many posts.
Or is it if someone on a forum says "this is a good site".
Nina, I clicked on that link that you gave me but I could not find the site explorer display. I would find it useful to be able to type in other sites and find out what sites link on to theirs.
Regards

No worries I'll DM you now.

[PlanetEarth]

What is DM?
Also, another question, if you pay for advertising on a site, is that a link, or is it not a good quality link?

[1weekSEO]

What is DM?
Also, another question, if you pay for advertising on a site, is that a link, or is it not a good quality link?

Apologies, Direct Message / Private Message - check your inbox.

Yes, of course you can pay to advertise for a link, but relevance is the key word here, eg a greetings card company advertises wedding day cards on a wedding directory, with images and links to the product.

Paying a company for 300/links a month to overseas unrelated directories and 3rd party sites is not good, and will potentially damage the performance of that website in Google search results

[snvinfotech]

Well, there are many views about link building and all the views are different accordingly so, it is very important for us to get better idea about link building techniques as, link building focuses on three main points that are relevancy, high PR domain, do follow attribute. every thing is tied with theses basic factors.

Thanks