Being listed on third-party websites is one of the most important things you can do SEO. Universal search is one of Google’s newest forms of search. Up until the release of universal search, vertical search was all the rage on Google. The only problem, is that most people didn’t even know that vertical searches existed. Now, universal search is Google’s newest attempt to take all of their vertical searches (I.E., blogs, images, video, etc.) and make it into one convenient search called universal search. In order to dominate and universal search, you have to understand some key components of link building, in particular, being featured on third-party websites.

Creating Links

Link building involves a lot more than simply having a link to your website scattered across other websites on the Internet. In fact, it is very important to understand how to link to your website on third-party websites, and how to do so in a manner that will attract search engines. Many links are considered to be spam by search engines if they are placed in inappropriate areas of the web, or if they are very clearly an effort to sell. In other words, if you are posting a comment on a blog that only talks about your website with a link back to your website, more than likely that will be seen as spam. However, if you actually contribute something of value in a blog forum comment, and you have a link back to your website, that is a much higher quality link. For this reason, it is very important to ensure that the links you place on third-party websites, even the ones that are put there by other website owners instead of yourself, are of high quality so that you are not wasting your efforts.

Finding Appropriate Sites

The next factor you’re going to want to consider if you want to dominate universal search is where your links are placed. Having a link to your website placed on many websites across the Internet doesn’t do you any good if those websites are of low quality. Whether you’re selecting a blog on which to comment, or you are approached by another website owner that wants to use or link to your site, be sure that the place in which your link appears is a quality website that is rated highly by search engines. For instance, if a website owner who is clearly using black hat (unethical or poor quality) search engine optimization techniques asked to link to your site, respectfully declined the request. The quality of the websites on which the link to your site appears is just as important as the quality of your website.

Remember Relevancy

The third thing you want to consider when building links, is in order to ensure the best results is, as always, relevancy. Any time you do anything to improve your search engine optimization ranking, or SEO ranking, you must make sure that what you are saying, the page and site on which your link appears, and the link itself is relevant. Relevancy is most often talked about as it relates to content and content marketing. However, it is extremely important in all aspects of SEO, particularly when it comes to link building.

Keeping these three things in mind when link building and selecting third-party sites on which to ear a link to your website from can help you dominate universal search, improve your SEO ranking, and result in a higher volume of traffic, and higher conversion rates. Being linked on third-party websites is incredibly important in all aspects of SEO, especially now that universal search is in play. Always make sure that your content, links, and contextual link placement is always highly relevant to your website, product, and service.