Words and links are still two of the biggest influences in search engine optimisation. Used in combination, they have a lot of power. That’s why you can benefit from taking care with choosing how you link to your website. But social media platforms like Twitter, with character limitations and the desire to be more minimalist, have taken some of that linking flexibility away.

Anyone using Twitter will notice that they often automatically convert links into a shortened, unrecognisable link which directs to the source. You can also choose which shortening service to use to shorten your links, but you are rarely able to use a longer link with keywords.

You probably don’t need to read the latest advice from the marketing online consultants to figure out the basic idea behind link building. Without links, your site won’t develop authority. Without authority, it won’t move up on the search engines. But even the most savvy online consultant would have to admit that doing that is just not as easy as it sounds.

More Is Not Better In Link Building

Everyday it seems, people are asking me about the optimum number of inbound links they need to acquire for their website in order to rank well in Google.

My answer is going to seem a little flip, but it is the honest, best answer.

Answer: You need more inbound links - of equal or higher quality - than what your competitors have.

Albert Einstein argued that any mathematical formula that required pages of calculations did not contain within it “the mind of God”.

So when Albert Einstein developed E=mc2, then Einstein had fulfilled the promise of a simple formula that could encompass the brilliance of God.

As the online market place continues to warm up to the idea of SEO, link building has become center stage as it tends to be the most time consuming and crucial part of any internet marketing strategy. Link building services are the most commonly outsourced aspect of SEO. This process involves finding qualified and thematically relevant one-way linking partners who will link back to your website.

As more and more marketing functions move to the web, businesses are at least starting to understand the requirements of ranking for keywords relevant to the business. Most however still don’t understand how Google and other search engines determine who gets top placements. The guidelines here will at least put you in position to achieve higher search engine ranks.

For businesses that want to wade into this arena, here are some guidelines that might save you the cost associated with website optimization. Bear in mind that there’s no free ride here. Expect to put some time in this effort if you really want to see results.

Okay, you’re the proud mama or papa to your brand new website. Now what? This isn’t like the movies - just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. The Internet is a huge limitless space with ever-growing numbers of websites. You are just one small website among millions. How will anybody ever find you? How do you become visible? Right now, you just exist out in the web, untethered. You need to become visible when someone searches for you and one way to become visible to people is to become visible to search engines. And one way to become visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is for your site to be tethered, or linked to other sites.

Obtaining one-way quality links is often cited as the “Holy Grail” of online success. Especially if you take the SEO route for getting high rankings for all your profitable keywords in the search engines. It’s no wonder then, achieving top spots for valuable and popular keywords should be the ultimate goal of any webmaster or online marketer.

How well you do in this “link quest” will largely determine the success or failure of your site or online business. Assuming of course, you’re going after free organic traffic from the search engines and not using Pay Per Click or other means of succeeding online.

Should you be sued for linking?

In an age where the web appears to be getting more and more open, with the rise of data portability and everybody sharing stuff with everybody else, it is fascinating to see that a newspaper publisher is suing another one that is linking to its content.

GateHouse Media Inc., which owns 125 Massachusetts newspapers as well as web properties like WickedLocal.com, sued the New York Times Co. because its Boston.com-run website “Your Town Newton” was posting headlines and small article snippets from WickedLocal.com.

If you are an experienced webmaster then you probably know that creating back links to your website is one of the best things that you can do to improve your Search Engine Ranking Placement (SERP). Google openly discusses the importance that their algorithms place on back links and even recommend that webmasters who want to improve their traffic use back links. Both Yahoo! and MSN are starting to talk openly about the importance of back links in their search algorithms as well.

Link building is an essential ingredient in ranking your website highly on the major search engines. There, now that we’ve got that brilliant grasp of the obvious out of the way let’s move on to what you can do to actually create them. Before we launch into the nitty-gritty of link building, no beginners guide would be complete without a brief explanation as to why links are important and the different elements of them. Being a beginners guide this won’t be an entirely complete líst but it will be enough to get you going on the right path. Understanding what you’re trying to do will help you do it better and more importantly, understanding the “why” of the situation will help you stretch your tactics outside of this and other articles on link building.