I am studying Marketing and Communication at the Graafschap College in Doetinchem. On April 18, 2011, I started my internship at Best4u Internet Marketing BV. Although I had a total of three lessons on internet marketing at school, I knew very little about it. I was therefore able to explain the terms SEO and SEA during my first conversations with Robin Buitink (Director of Best4u Internet Marketing BV). However, when he asked me if I wanted to create a plan for a link building strategy, I had no idea what it entailed. Consequently, I began to delve into link building during the first weeks of my internship.
In the article Link building vs. Monopoly I explained what link building is. Then I made the comparison with the board game Monopoly, which is well-known to many people, because link building is not known to everyone.
In this article, I will address three central questions that I will elaborate on further in my plan. This plan is part of my internship and belongs to Core Task 1.
Why is link building on the market?
When I first started delving into internet marketing, and particularly link building strategies, I discovered that there are many different ways to build links. Link building is the policy of webmasters to increase the number of links pointing to a site in order to positively influence search engines that use link analysis (also known as link popularity). The best-known search engine that uses this method is Google. Registering on start pages, exchanging links with other websites, and paid links are examples of link building. One website states that it should be done 'this way', while another states that it should be done 'that way'. Link building determines more than half of your position in Google. In industries with relatively high competition, link building is necessary to obtain a good position in Google's search results. Simply put: it is indispensable in the world of internet marketing.
What objectives does link building achieve?
A link building strategy has one very important objective. It is the process of creating inbound links to a website to increase the link popularity of that website. It is one of the ways to rank high in the results of search engines such as Google. The higher you rank in Google, the more visitors you usually get.
How long does link building continue to have an effect on popularity in Google?
As I have indicated before, there are many possibilities for link building. Because Google's methods often change, the way you acquire links must also change. Various methods are still being invented to obtain the so-called 'backlinkscan obtain a reference to a web page on your website from another web page on another domain.
Product life cycle (PLC)
One of the best-known methods of link building is submitting links to start pages. The PLC model consists of a diagram. The diagram describes five phases: introduction phase, growth phase, maturity phase, saturation, and decline.
Companies discovered that registering with start pages was very simple and worked well (introduction). As more companies started using it, it became the primary method of link building (growth). Even as new methods were invented, registering with start pages remained the best option (maturity). Search engines changed their methods, causing registrations on start pages to gradually decline (saturation).
Now that new methods of link building are constantly being discovered, I wouldn't be surprised if registering on start pages ends up in the 'decline' of the PLC.
Social links
Social media is on the rise. This will certainly play a major role in link building in the coming years. As soon as Google announces that social media references will be included in the 'Google mix', all link builders, internet marketers, and SEO specialists will jump on it en masse.
Could this become the new way of link building? Whether this will be successful remains to be seen….