To “follow” or “nofollow”
In addition to the above and in order to give webmasters a way to link to a website without passing any link juice (for example in the case of ads) search engines introduced what is known as the "nofollow" links. This is a special tag you can add to a link (for example <a href=http://www.abcsite.com rel="nofollow">Abc Site</a>) that tells search engines not to count the particular links as a vote to the referenced website.
This was done so that you can link other websites from yours without taking the risk of being caught for selling or exchanging links.
As a rule of thumb, you should add the nofollow tag on all your external links (within your pages) that go to websites you cannot trust 100%, to ALL your comment links, to ALL your blog roll links, and to ALL banner ad links.
First, you should understand that link building it’s not only a matter of quantity but it is a matter of quality as well. In other words, it no longer matters how many links are pointing to your website but it is more important from where these links are coming. For example, a link from a normal blog does not have the same weight as a link from the New York Times or a link from Matt Cutts's blog (head of Google Quality team) is not the same as a link from my blog.
If you ask Google they will tell you that any links pointing to your website has to be natural links. Natural links are exactly what their name implies. A website owner or blogger likes another website or blog and naturally adds a link to his/her blog.
Does this happen in reality or is it another myth?
It certainly does but you have to try really hard to get to this point. Take for example this blog, there are many incoming links because other webmasters find the content interesting and I also link to other sites in my articles because I find their content interesting and want to inform my readers about it. This is natural link building where a link has more value from the readers’ point of you rather than the search engine's point of view. The best way to attract links is to publish content (text, images, videos, infographics, etc) that other people would like to link. If natural links are what I have just described above, in which category do all other links belong?
They belong in the category of artificial links and by adopting such techniques you increase the risk of getting a manual or algorithmic penalty from Google.
Is guest blogging a valid way to build links?
Guest posting can be a valid way to get links back to your website provided that you don’t do it just for links and that you don’t overdo it. You can read these 2 articles to get a complete picture as to when to accept guest posts on your blog and when to guest post on other blogs.
Social Media
Social media is part of ‘off-site SEO’ and if you think about it, it’s also a form of link building. It should be noted that almost all of the links you get from social media sites are “nofollow” but this does not mean that they do not have any value.
Social Media mentions are gaining ground as ranking factors and proper configuration of social media profiles can also boost SEO.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is not as popular as it used to be in the past but it is still a good way to get traffic to your website. Depending on your niche you can find websites like reddit.com, digg.com, stumbleupon.com, and scoop. it, and delicious.com (to name a few) to promote your content.
Conclusion
Off-page SEO is as important as on-site SEO. If you want your SEO Campaigns to be successful you have to do both. When thinking about link building don’t take the easy way, but try to get links from hard-to-get places. The more difficult is to get a link, the more value it has.
In the past, you could easily get thousands of links and rank higher but nowadays you have to do more than that. My advice is to forget about link building together and put all your efforts into making a great website, promote it correctly and everything else will follow.
In addition to the above and in order to give webmasters a way to link to a website without passing any link juice (for example in the case of ads) search engines introduced what is known as the "nofollow" links. This is a special tag you can add to a link (for example <a href=http://www.abcsite.com rel="nofollow">Abc Site</a>) that tells search engines not to count the particular links as a vote to the referenced website.
As a rule of thumb, you should add the nofollow tag on all your external links (within your pages) that go to websites you cannot trust 100%, to ALL your comment links, to ALL your blog roll links, and to ALL banner ad links.
First, you should understand that link building it’s not only a matter of quantity but it is a matter of quality as well. In other words, it no longer matters how many links are pointing to your website but it is more important from where these links are coming. For example, a link from a normal blog does not have the same weight as a link from the New York Times or a link from Matt Cutts's blog (head of Google Quality team) is not the same as a link from my blog.
If you ask Google they will tell you that any links pointing to your website has to be natural links. Natural links are exactly what their name implies. A website owner or blogger likes another website or blog and naturally adds a link to his/her blog.
Does this happen in reality or is it another myth?
It certainly does but you have to try really hard to get to this point. Take for example this blog, there are many incoming links because other webmasters find the content interesting and I also link to other sites in my articles because I find their content interesting and want to inform my readers about it. This is natural link building where a link has more value from the readers’ point of you rather than the search engine's point of view. The best way to attract links is to publish content (text, images, videos, infographics, etc) that other people would like to link. If natural links are what I have just described above, in which category do all other links belong?
They belong in the category of artificial links and by adopting such techniques you increase the risk of getting a manual or algorithmic penalty from Google.
Is guest blogging a valid way to build links?
Guest posting can be a valid way to get links back to your website provided that you don’t do it just for links and that you don’t overdo it. You can read these 2 articles to get a complete picture as to when to accept guest posts on your blog and when to guest post on other blogs.
Social Media
Social media is part of ‘off-site SEO’ and if you think about it, it’s also a form of link building. It should be noted that almost all of the links you get from social media sites are “nofollow” but this does not mean that they do not have any value.
Social Media mentions are gaining ground as ranking factors and proper configuration of social media profiles can also boost SEO.
Social BookmarkingSocial bookmarking is not as popular as it used to be in the past but it is still a good way to get traffic to your website. Depending on your niche you can find websites like reddit.com, digg.com, stumbleupon.com, and scoop. it, and delicious.com (to name a few) to promote your content.
Conclusion
Off-page SEO is as important as on-site SEO. If you want your SEO Campaigns to be successful you have to do both. When thinking about link building don’t take the easy way, but try to get links from hard-to-get places. The more difficult is to get a link, the more value it has.
In the past, you could easily get thousands of links and rank higher but nowadays you have to do more than that. My advice is to forget about link building together and put all your efforts into making a great website, promote it correctly and everything else will follow.
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