One Way Link Building: Creating A Demand For The Information On Your Site

One way links are one method of link building that not only offers a means of sharing your link with sister sites but improves your site's standing in the search engine page ranks by giving your link the appearance of being so valuable, other sites will host it without the need for a reciprocal link or link trade.

Reciprocal linking is by far the most practiced method of link building floating around the web today. It is an agreement between two or more sites promising that if one site shares the other's link on their page, they in turn will post the first site's link. The posts usually have to be in a featured article or embedded in keywords (at least if all parties in the agreement know how to use this method to their full advantage).

There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links when used in moderation. Last year one of the many bloggers under Google's employ posted an article on how Google is working on changing their formula to overlook sites that will make reciprocal links with any and all sites that ask. This form of reciprocal link building dilutes the quality of all content hosted on the main site and usually leads to the formation of link farms.

The method of link building preferred by Google and many other major search engines is that of the one way link. One way links are links to a site that have been shared or hosted without having to exchange a link in return. When the search engine scans a site to determine their page rank on the results page, it shows that the hosted link's site is producing quality information that actually has some value to it. This creates a higher demand for the site and increases the page ranking exponentially.

Achieving One Way Links

One of the reasons one way links hold so much weight is that they are extremely difficult to come by naturally. Usually a site already has to be established and, even then, it could take months or even years before a one way link is created. Here are some of the methods site owners can use to not only speed up the one way link building process but greatly increase their chances of gaining a foothold in the blogosphere that serves as a perpetual source of building their following.

Step One: Submit your site to major directories.

This method is not approved of by many webmasters although it does bring in some traffic depending on how big the category the site fits in. An online directory is like a phonebook for the internet in that site's pay a fee to have their site listed under a specific category so that when surfers search the directory; your site is listed as being exactly what they need. It can be expensive if the site is to be listed in multiple directories but for those looking to sign up for just one, Yahoo! might not be the largest site but it does draw in the majority of directory searches.

Step Two: Make sure your content is entertaining, informative, and/or unusual.

The more your site seems like a commodity, the more traffic it naturally brings in. If your content is produced from angles that no other site has claimed or the products you are promoting are not items that can be picked up anywhere, more surfers killing time on the web or looking into their favorite topics will take the link to your site without having to be coerced. For example, icanhascheezburger.com has built an entire culture around pictures of cats that people can add comments to and re-post. Not only has the site received billions of views with more logging in every day, but it has created a niche in pop culture that demanded the addition of more sites hosted by icanhascheezburger. Now, the icanhascheezeburger community is made up of thirteen sites, each focusing on a different niche of the internet and bringing in almost as much viewer traffic daily as the major social networking sites.

Step Three: Find sites that are looking for articles on content that you are trying to host on your site.

Syndication is a two way street. What it usually means is that smaller blogs with a tiny but growing following or local news sites covering international news re-post articles from sites that already have a large following or have created a name that is trusted. What it means for you in the world of link building is finding sister sites that allow outside authors to publish stories on their site and embedding your link in keywords throughout the article you submit or as a part of your signature. For this to be considered a one way link, you would then have to trust that the article is going to be read by the larger site's following and not post a link on your site linking your followers to the article. This method of one way link building is a lot like guest blogging although articles from your site to theirs will most likely not be written on a regular basis.

Putting These Methods into Effect

Like with any endeavor, on the internet or in life, not every ploy you try is going to produce the reactions you want. These are just the three easiest ways to set up one way links without buying them. The buying of one way links is rumored to be one of the aspects of determining PageRank that Google is writing out of the formula making it expensive and while it may produce results, it will not boost the overall rank of your page which is the end goal of link building.