New streams of qualified website traffic. That’s the goal of all website marketers. But most overlook the significant value of accumulating inbound links from other websites. Incoming links provide two distinct competitive advantages. Strategically located links from relevant or vertically compatible sites will directly refer highly qualified leads. But an often-ignored derived benefit is the positive effect that inbound links contribute to search engine ranking potential.

Achieving high ranking positions for productive keyword phrases will generally drive more qualified traffic to a website than any other website marketing effort. And more importantly… it is free traffic. It’s all about receiving the best leads available at absolutely no cost. There isn’t a better marketing investment.

Search engines apply many factors (algorithms) to determine the ranking positions of search results to particular search queries. One of those factors is what’s called “link popularity”. Links from a web page to another web page is a measurement of a website’s popularity. A link from web page A to page B is a popularity vote for page B. Inbound links from highly popular sites carry greater voting value. Links from relevant popular sites carry even greater value. Therefore, a focused linking strategy is imperative to search engine ranking potential.

Think of inbound links as imbedded “word-of-mouth marketing”. If you expect meaningful website traffic, building strong link popularity is the best way to accomplish that objective. The more incoming links to your site, the more ways there are for potential leads to find your website.

Focus on relevant, compatible links. Search engine ranking algorithms are designed to deliver the most relevant results to the context of a search query. Therefore it is widely believed and logical to assume that links from sites that are closely relevant and compatible to the content of the target website are awarded a higher ranking value. Further, leads referred from relevant sites are more likely converted to customers.

Reciprocal Link Exchanges. There is much debate among search engine optimization specialists on the value of exchanging website links. This author’s opinion is that reciprocal links do contribute value but the extent of that value is unknown except to the search engines. Link exchanges between relevant sites are likely more valuable than reciprocal exchanges between non-relevant sites.

Avoid reciprocating link farms. The search engines will penalize linking schemes that are solely intended to artificially inflate link popularity. Link farms can be described as a group of websites that excessively cross-link to each other. Link exchanges between sites that are not relevant and vertically compatible that are intended to legitimately refer leads are within the spirit of ethical cross-marketing, but do not participate in devious linking schemes. Rest assured that the search engines employ sophisticated spidering methods to identify artificial link farms. Resultant penalties are always “silently applied”.

Look for pages with fewer outgoing links. The search engines assign a link popularity value to a particular web page. Its “popularity value” is transferred to any web page or pages it links to in-ratio to the number of outgoing links. For example (hypothetically), if the sending page has a link popularity value of 5 and it sends 5 outgoing links, each receiving page would receive a transfer value of 1 (5?5=1). If that same sending page links to 10 other pages, each page would receive a transfer value of 0.5 (5?10=0.5). Therefore, links from pages with fewer outgoing links are generally more valuable.

Consider the value of “link reputation”. Keywords used in the anchor text add significant ranking strength. Anchor text are words used in the linking point that describes what a user will find at link destination (receiving web page). Links from within content are more valuable than merely a list of links because the search engines analyze words immediately before and after the linking point to determine degree of relevancy. Search engines also analyze other factors that exist to determine relevancy measurement such as keywords contained within the sending page’s Title Tag, which is a strong indicator of relevancy to a specific search query. For example (hypothetically), if the receiving web page is about “Phoenix Real Estate” and the sending page discusses “Phoenix Real Estate: and its title tag uses those keywords… the reputation of the link carries greater ranking value.

Write articles and permit re-publishing. Articles are content, but permitting other websites to publish your articles creates tremendous opportunity to gain one-way links to your website. In addition to author blocks, which include a link to your site, you have complete control over article content to insert multiple links back to your site using important keyword phrases as anchor text (link reputation). Always require that articles appear intact including outgoing links when granting re-publishing rights.

Submit your site to directories. There are many general industry directories that will list your site for free when you follow their inclusion and submission guidelines. Those include http://www.dmoz.org/ (Open Directory Project), http://www.goguides.org/, www.websavvy.cc and others. There are also directories that charge for inclusion including the Yahoo Directory at http://www.yahoo.com/ and http://www.joeant.com/ which is a great source of cost effective referrals. Search the web for industry specific directories.

Delegate link building responsibility. Without the right kind of inbound links, attaining high search engine ranking for competitive search terms is extremely difficult if not impossible. There are no shortcuts to the process of building quality links and it requires an ongoing effort to continually strengthen ranking potential. If you expect a growing flow of quality leads, assign a dedicated responsibility to implement and sustain a link building strategy.