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Links from quality sites are the currency of the web. They directly send you traffic and they improve your search engine rankings, which increases your traffic even more.

However, link building can be a frustrating process. Most search marketers will tell you that it’s one of the most difficult parts of their job. Quality links are not easy to get, so here are 5 principles to help improve your link building efforts.

1. Target sites that link out.

Much of the frustration from link building can come from targeting sites that don’t link out often. If you target sites that historically have not been generous with their links, you will have a hard time.

Before targeting a site for a link, I look at their content and see if they regularly link to other sites. I check to see if they have a links section. For blogs, you can look to see if it has a blogroll. If a site doesn’t have many links to other sites, I don’t target them.

If a site does have outgoing links, check to see what kind of content their links point to. If you can create similar content, you have a great chance of getting a link from that site.

Also, I like to target blogs because blogs usually link out more than other types of sites.

2. Have a long term mindset.

Link building is relationship building. And relationship building takes time in the real world and on the internet. So, don’t expect too much too fast.

Profitable online relationships take time and effort to cultivate. But if you build these relationships, you won’t have to resort to risky tactics like “begging for links”. These tactics don’t usually work and often end up hurting your reputation.

3. Write quality content on a consistent basis.

If you want your blog to attract links, you’ll need to write quality content. Quality content can come in many different forms.

You can publish something unique and interesting. That’s always a good way to get links. Or you can cover a relevant issue in your industry that everyone seems to be talking about. A useful guide or tutorial is another type of quality content that works.

Also, consistency is key. Most website owners don’t like to link to blogs that haven’t been updated in a while. You should publish at least one blog post every 7-14 days. That makes your blog look alive instead of dead.

4. Get noticed.

Much of link building is just getting your blog out in the open. But you have to figure out how to do this without being overbearing.

Try contacting webmasters directly to start a conversation or give them something they would find interesting. Savvy business people have been doing this in the offline world for a long time. They will send an executive newspaper or magazine clippings. These clippings might be of an interesting article or a news item about the executive’s company. Or they’ll mail the executive a letter with useful feedback about his products.

To apply this online, find the website’s contact page and email the webmaster. If the webmaster is on Twitter, I would interact with them there by replying to their tweets.

With blogs, I would recommend leaving many quality comments. This will attract the blogger’s attention. They in turn will probably visit your site and hopefully, they’ll find something to link to. If you don’t get a link right away, you might get one later as the blogger might subscribe to your blog.

I talked about linking out as a link building strategy in my previous post. This strategy works because webmasters often visit sites that send them traffic.

5. Ask for a link.

If you’re applying the other four principles, you’ll have good success with this one.

But don’t ask for a link to your blog home page. Instead, write a quality blog post and point webmasters to that post.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask for a link. If you’ve gotten a webmaster’s attention and you’re pointing them to a quality blog post, they won’t be annoyed. Remember, you’re doing them a favor by giving them something good to link to. At the same time, you don’t want to overdo this as webmasters don’t like getting too many link requests. I wouldn’t send more than one link request per month to the same webmaster unless you know them really well.

I always get excited whenever I get a link from a reputable site. My traffic increases and my Google rankings go up.

Recently, I got a link to one of my blogs that surprised me. I had not really targeted the blog that linked to me. All I had done was leave a couple of comments. Also, I had linked to him telling my readers to check out his blog.

I checked out the post where he linked to me. On this post, he welcomed my readers and gave an overview of his blog.

This event reminded me of the effectiveness of linking to other sites to build links to your own site.

I’ll Scratch Your Back If You Scratch Mine

Linking to other sites, or “linking out”, works because of human nature. If you do a favor for someone, they’ll often return the favor.

Many bloggers understand the value of links. They know how hard it is to get links especially in the beginning, so they are appreciative whenever they get one.

Also, the web is now a social network instead of just a place to get information. The new PR for businesses is personal relationships instead of public relations. In this environment, a link is the equivalent to a compliment or a personal recommendation.

And just like in the offline world, if you compliment someone, you’ll probably get one back (at least in the long term).

I Thought Reciprocal Linking was Not Effective

You may have heard that reciprocal links are not as effective as one-way links. This is true, but what many people don’t realize is that a reciprocal link is better than no link at all. I’ve had one site that got a good amount of traffic and 95% of its links were reciprocal links.

Also, in the long term, reciprocal links lead to one way links because of the traffic and exposure you receive. Each reciprocal link is going to send you some traffic. Some of the people who follow the link to your blog have their own blog. If they like your blog, they may link to you in the future.

And don’t underestimate the power of word of mouth. Each person that visits your blog may know a blogger. If you have good content, they will probably tell their blogger friend about your blog. This often leads to a link from that blogger.

With traffic and exposure being the key, you’ll want to link to sites that get a lot of traffic. I use these two simple methods to evaluate a site’s traffic volume.

If it’s a blog, I check to see if they have a consistent stream of comments (an average of 5 or more per post).

Looking at the site’s Alexa Rank also helps. Any site with a rank of 500,000 or lower will probably send a good amount of traffic. Alexa Rank is not the most accurate measure of traffic, but for the most part, I find that the lower the Alexa Rank of a site, the more traffic it will send.

Finally, reciprocal links are definitely easier to build. This goes back to my first point. If you link to a site, that site is much more likely to link to you than if you didn’t link to it.

Other Sites in Your Industry are Friends not Competitors

Think of other sites and blogs in your niche not as competitors but as friends.

Why do car dealerships build next to each other? Why are the food shops in a mall located in the same place? To share traffic.

The same principle applies for linking out. There are no physical food courts on the internet. However, if you link out to the blogs you want to be associated with, you can setup a “virtual food court” and share in their traffic as they link back to you.

Over to You

How often do you link out? Have you received any links?