Link Building

Link Building is a the process of placing link(s) of your website on other third party websites. An effective link building program involves placing on websites that are related websites. By related we mean in the same or similar sector. The websites you choose for your link building campaign must be of reasonable quality with good content.

Google PageRank

As explained, link building is one of the methods of increasing your website presence on the internet. As your one way and reciprocal link building campaign gathers pace and the more of your links are scattered across quality websites search engines begin to take more notice and your rankings are more likely to improve. A combination of good content and an ethical & effective link building campaign raises the importance of your website in the eyes of search engines. Google measures this with its page ranking technology known as Google PageRank or Google PR. Literally every page on the internet that is indexed by Google has a page rank which can be between 0 and 10. A web page with the Google PR of 0 is said to have no Page Rank! Having your links added to websites with high page rank can have a positive effect on your website's page rank. The following image is an attempt to graphically illustrate how this relationship works. The black arrows illustrate links between websites:
Illustration of the relationship between Google PR link pages:

Reciprocal Links

This is a link exchange program between two websites. Both websites commit to place each others' link. The placement of links may be in the form of text or graphical banners. Both Parties must be vigilant to check for the existence of their links through out the exchange program as some webmasters remove links without notice. Reciprocal Link exchange is the most common link building technique. Link exchange must be an organic process and too many links with other websites not only doesn't guarantee a favourable position by Search Engines, it may even be counter productive. Care should also be taken te exchange with relevant websites. We have seen too may sites being sandboxed because of having links to "bad neighbourhoods". By placing a link on your website you are effectively casting a vote in the favour of the site.

One Way Links

This is the most effective building strategy for any website. However it's difficult and expensive to implement. The more relevant and quality your one way links are, the better the chances of search engines taking notice, and hence improving your rankings. One way linking has more weight in Search Engine algorithms than reciprocal links, as one way linking is deemed to be an unconditional vote for the website which is the target of one way links.