The notion of link building per se is wrong. It makes us do strange things and behave differently on the web, which as humans we would not like to do. Link building makes us approach other website owners with link requests, and many times outsource the efforts to a third party, which knows little about our businesses, our customers and their characteristics.

Would you approach a stranger to write a testimonial about you and your achievements?

Certainly not!
 
Why should then a website owner chase unknown websites to link to his site for a return or favour?

Did I hear someone says it’s marketing, and if we don’t reach out how would the world know about our websites, our products and services? And, did I hear that search engine love this way, and we must give them what they need most to trust our sites – which is – more links pointing to our websites?

Referral Links – The right links!

Okay, let’s say I am an expert in my field, and customers and clients know about that. They come back to me each time they need my services instead of going to the nearest competitor. This is the kind of trust value and link campaign companies should learn to explore, instead of chasing link building blindly.

A happy client would love to write testimonials about you and put links to your website. This approach should be long term, and even though it may take time to get the right amount of link trust to get top rankings for your search terms, it should be your primary link building strategy. The referral links are the real links, from real customers with long staying power. How you make your customers link to you or spread word about your business is up to you. You can build suitable incentives to encourage your customers.

Article & Content Links – The viral links!

Another approach to attract links instead of chasing them is to write articles, reviews and commentaries on your subject matter on your own blog, on others blogs, or various forums and article submission sites. This will help you spread your name and word about your business fairly quickly. This could also establish you as an authority in your field, and expand your business to the distant markets, spreading your reach.

Writing articles and becoming active on the social media relating to your subject demands an active commitment of time and resources. If you do not have the flair for writing, have little time besides your work, or feel that this job should better be done by a seasoned writer, you can hire a good writer for a long-term contract to ensure consistency in writing style. You can also start with getting few articles written by professional writers to post on your site and other places.

Search engines love fresh content and people would appreciate your knowledge and skills while benefiting from your articles. By throwing links on the body of the articles, you would be able to spread your website address virally to other websites and blogs.

Several website and blog owners are actively seeking quality content for their sites. Many would simply come to your website each time they need topic related to your field, to place on their website. You would continuously generate valuable one-way with your links embedded in the body of your articles. By using technologies like RSS, Atom and Email, you can automate your articles to land on your subscribers’ in-boxes or their favourite applications and devices.

If you take care of these two approaches, you would never need chasing link building or paying for them, for who knows how long they stay there.

Think before buying links – The risks and relative values.

Another important draw-back of buying links is that you are always exposing your domain to risk, as search engines are continuously looking for websites and businesses selling links. If they find such links on your website, they either pass no link juice for those links, or can even penalize your website for such behaviour.

Just observe these two approaches and keep updating your website following the best web standards. I can assure you; soon your websites can rise from obscurity to the prominence in your markets and search terms.