You already know that search engine optimization is important to reaching your target audience. Along with choosing the right keywords to include in your informative content, there's the matter of using link building to best advantage. With the right strategy, you can identify and prioritize your opportunities to increase link value and get more rewards for your efforts. Here are some tips on how to reach those goals and enjoy a healthy flow of traffic.

Understanding Why You're Building Links in the First Place

Link building is not something done in a vacuum. There has to be specific reasons why you are going to the trouble of building those links. Define them and it will be easier to come up with a design that fits in with your goals.

Maybe you are building links to:

Improve your search engine ranking. The plan may be to use links that drive more traffic to your website home page. Maybe the idea is to get more search engine love for a subdomain associated with your website.
Improve the quality of the traffic. You don't just want a lot of hits. You want visitors to stick around long enough to provide some benefit.
Increase your authority and visibility. You want people to trust what you have to offer is the real deal. Whether it's helpful information or a product that does what it claims to do, it's all about building trust.

Project How Well the Link Target Will Aid in Achieving the Goal

Now that you have your goal(s) clearly identified, think about the structure of the link. What will it do in terms of creating interest and value to your site or to a subdomain? Consider grading on a scale where 1 represents little to no value and 5 means the link is exactly what you need.

The questions you ask and the answers that result vary based on what you want to accomplish. a few examples include:

Have you created a dofollow link or a nofollow link?
Will the link send you direct or indirect traffic?
Does the link pass the proper anchor text or at least provide you with some control?

If you like the answers and they are in line with your goals, congratulations! You've got links that are likely to accomplish what you have in mind.

It's Spreadsheet Time

Now that you've created links, it's time to decide how to prioritize the deployment. Using a spreadsheet is a great way to set up your plan of action because you can cut and paste the cells into whatever order works best.

At first, just enter the links along with a column that outlines what the link is supposed to do. Don't worry about order right now. Just get all those links in front of you on one sheet.
Next, make use of the rating that you assigned to each one earlier. Add a column with those ratings. Again, don't worry about the order right now. That will come in a moment.
With the links, goals, and ratings all in front of you, consider each one carefully. Now that you look at it, does that one link really rate as high as you first thought? If not, change it. Repeat the process with each link until you reach the bottom of the list.

Now, organize the links based on what you think is the most important goal. If direct traffic to pages on your website is what you crave the most, that link goes to the top of the list. When your plan is to beef up your landing pages that send people to your website, those are the links that bubble to the top. Rearrange the links until you have the right plan to grow your traffic, your brand, and your reputation.

Don't get bogged down in the process. Keep it simple and it won't be long before your process is defined and it's time to put those newly minted links to good use. As your priorities change, use the same method to refine your strategy. It won't take long before you begin to see the results of your hard work.