Good search engine optimization tactics are a crucial part of any online marketing strategy, and link building is a part of good SEO. But inserting links can be much trickier than it sounds – at least if you want to increase your search engine ranking by doing so. More than just a random smattering of links pasted throughout your website, or spam links across the blogosphere that pint back to your website, link-building has to be done correctly in order to work. Not only can poor link building techniques ruin your SEO rank, but in some cases it can actually cause you to incur SEO penalties. So what is more important when you set about the task of link building, quality or quantity? As it turns out, both.

Quality
The quality of a link depends on several things. For one thing, it can’t be an overly commercial link. In other words, if you and your affiliates link to each other without rhyme or reason, it’s just glorified spamming of your viewers and won’t help you. Similarly, placing links to any website, including yours, where it doesn’t make sense or is clearly a marketing tactic can also hurt your rank, even if you’re linking between pages on your own site. When you insert a link, make sure it’s relevant to the subject you’re writing about and is helpful to the viewer in some way. Links to sites that ask people to sign up for a service or buy a product will hurt your ranking, most likely. Also, if you’re going to link to your site on other sites, make sure you’ve left it in your signature while posting a thoughtful blog comment instead of randomly leaving links to your site all over the web without contributing anything.

Quantity

Quantity is still important, but it comes after quality. Learn how to earn quality links via industry publications, directories and blogs, and do a few of them first before you try to be prolific with your links. Once you’ve mastered the art, then go ahead and focus on quantity. You don’t want a mass quantity of links in every other sentence, but you do want to combine content marketing with link building, naturally linking to resources, other pages on your site, your blog, and any other helpful site within the text of your article or page. Helpful content with relative links is the mark of a good quality website.

The Main Point

Provide content to your viewers that is relevant to the point of your site. If you offer insurance services, for example, offer content that explains how to protect a home against fire damage (assuming you sell property insurance). Don’t spam your readers. Not only will search engine spiders pick up on that immediately, your readers will, too, and it is unlikely they will come back. A website that sounds like a run-on sales pitch is the fastest way to lose customers, lower your SEO ranking, and stunt business growth. Focus on a reasonable amount of quality links that fit naturally with the text of your site and you’ll be on your way to outstanding link building and a successful overall marketing strategy.