Link building is an established and effective strategy for websites to be popular on the web and consequently achieve good search engine rankings. Search engines, especially Google places increased importance on the inbound links coming to a website while determining its rank for a particular keyword on the search results page.

Also, one should be careful not to collect links through unethical means. Google strictly devalues link farms, paid links and other low quality link directories. Rather, it places importance on websites that link to other websites with relevant content even if they have fewer links of greater page rank. Thus focus should be on linking to relevant and well established websites.

Here are some tips for new websites to start their link building strategy and become popular on the world wide web.

Start Slow

There is something called as the Google Sandbox effect which means that new websites are not indexed immediately for their industry competitive keywords. They are kept in Google databases for a few months till Google is sure about the credibility of the website. Hence, for your link building activities, it is advisable to start slow and focus on your less competitive keywords initially. As time passes and Google recognizes your credibility, start shifting the focus towards your high competitive keywords because this is when they'll show effective results. Your website will be indexed by Google and get listed in the search results as well. Your link building activity should grow gradually and be natural. Start by submitting a couple of links and work by increasing the number gradually.

Connect to Relevant websites

While linking to other websites, make sure you consider your industry. This is because Google knows what industry your website belongs to and it would see how popular you are with the websites belonging to that particular industry. Google determines the subject matter that is relevant to your website or products or services or industry as such. Therefore, you need to connect with websites that relate to your business and get links with them. The idea is unless you have relevant authorities voting for you, no matter how many votes you accumulate you will not gain any credibility. This way you not only increase your chances of getting indexed in Google but you can also receive traffic from the linked websites.

Consider the Geography

Businesses focus on particular regions in order to generate more sales. However, selling services is not enough. In order to be successful, you need to be more visible in the location and be popular. So research out chambers of commerce, trade associations, local business groups or city directories and link to them.

Anchor Text

Instead of plain links i.e. URLs try to include descriptive texts that describe the contents of the links. These are called anchor text. Also, try to include your keywords and phrases in the anchor text.