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Link Building: Is Faster Better?

By Steve Shaw

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 18Jul2009 Word count: 733 Viewed: 143 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Most human beings are fans of immediate gratification, especially when it comes to making a difference in their website traffic. We'd all like to see results *yesterday*, and if we think we can speed things along by embarking on a frenzied, short term effort with a big impact, then we're all up for it!

But when it comes to building backlinks to a website, is faster really better?

Or should you focus your efforts on a steady and long term campaign?

This article will tell you the most beneficial approach to take. Let's start at the beginning...

How Does Link Building Work?

Link building is an integral aspect of driving traffic to your website. When you build links to your website, you create two types of incoming traffic:

*Direct traffic.

This occurs when visitors click the link that was formed. For instance, if you're doing Article Marketing, each article you submit has a resource box that contains a link back to your website. When people come across your article, they can click the link in your resource box which would then take them to your website. That is direct traffic--your visitors are finding you directly from the link itself.

*Indirect traffic.

An increase in backlinks can dramatically affect your search engine ranking over the long term. This means that when people go to Google and do a search for your keyword terms, your website appears higher up in the rankings.

The higher your website appears in the search engine results list, the more likely people will click through to your website. If your website appears on the first page of Google's results page (or better yet, at the top of the list), then the traffic to your website will increase because more people are finding you via search engines.

While both of these types of traffic are beneficial, the main benefit of link building is in SEO--your website appearing higher in Google when someone does a search for your keyword terms. Traffic from search engines can make a dramatic impact on your website over the long term, while the direct traffic you'll receive from your articles is more of a short term thing.

Link Building: It Takes Time To See Results

When you're building links and waiting on results, you should be looking at your calendar and not your watch.

Search engines do not re-evaluate incoming links on a daily or weekly basis. Most search engines will re-calculate your backlinks every 3 months or so, and at that time make adjustments in your search engine ranking.

So, when you're marketing your site do not expect to see major or lasting results for several months.

When you build links, you can of course reap some benefits before this time--when your article is published at article directories and other publishers you can receive traffic from those sources even before there is an impact at the search engine level.

If your article is published in a popular e-zine, you could even receive a substantial burst of traffic from that one appearance. Keep in mind that this is short term traffic--most of the time your biggest boost of direct traffic (via ezines, article directories and other publishers) from an article will be in the first few days after it has been published.

Should You Try To Build Links Fast?

If you are interested in long term and lasting results (as most website owners are), your best bet is to undertake a link building campaign where you accumulate links steadily and consistently over time. The results from this type of long range approach are more likely to be beneficial to your website than trying to build an onslaught of links all at once.

If you were to take the "fast and furious" approach, a rapid accumulation of links could damage your SEO, which would in turn negatively impact your long term traffic trends.

The goal is not to do a week or two (or even a month or two) of frenzied marketing and link building and then quit--that is not how SEO works. Building traffic to a website takes consistent work, and it's not done overnight.

As a website owner who wants more targeted visitors to your website, your best bet is to develop a link building campaign that gradually builds links over time. Your main marketing activity should be something that you can do on an ongoing basis.

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