Writing by Nick Stamoulis

I’ll admit it, the first time you take a good hard look at your Link Building strategy, the seemingly endless rows of directories, blogs, forums, business profiles, social networking sites and more that you’re supposed to methodically work through can be incredibly overwhelming. A lot of website owners think the best approach is to roll up their sleeves and begin at the top. But Link Building is one of those few times where starting at the top of the list and working your way down is not the way to go.

Search engines like to see you take a diversified approach to your Link Building efforts. So don’t do all your paid directory submissions one month, your local search profile creation the next, your video content the month after that and so on. Taking a blended approach shows commitment to the branding of your site and keeps the search engines from thinking you are trying to spam them. It also helps get your website into a lot of different online arenas so you can begin building your reputation as an industry expert.

Best practice is to commit to 20 or so different Link Building activities a month. So join two or three industry associations, submit different articles to a few article directories and document sharing sites and find 15-25 blogs to comment on. Keeping it varied will also help keep you from getting bored with your Link Building activities.

Do your best to avoid practicing any black hat SEO techniques just to meet a link quota for the month. For instance, let’s say you originally intended to submit one press release every two months for distribution, but this month you don’t have any newsworthy information to share. Instead of forcing out a press release (that is probably going to flop or get flagged as spam), swap it for a different activity and push the press release back a month. It’s ok to move your Link Building efforts around as circumstances change.

You should lay out a year-long Link Building strategy and use that as your guide. It’ll help keep you focused, keep your efforts diversified and guarantee you don’t overlook anything important.