In this chapter’s introduction, we noted that “links are the main determinants of ranking behavior.” If you do an okay job on link building and your competitor does a great job, your competitor’s business will grow at your expense. As a result, link acquisition strategies are an essential part of an effective SEO effort.

You should also see link building as an ongoing activity. Each of us has seen cases where a brief focus on link accumulation brought returns that were squandered by abandoning the strategy. Unfortunately for these sites, they lost momentum and rankings to their competitors (the same ones they passed when they were actively building links), and it proved very difficult to catch up to them again.

Link building is not fundamentally different from PR work. Your goal is to acquire positive citations across the Web. The big difference is the technical aspects—focusing on the quality of the referring source, the keywords in the link, and the page(s) to which they point.

People will not link to low-quality content, or sites that offer a poor user experience (unless they are compensated for the link). And unless you are fortunate enough to possess a major brand, people won’t link to purely commercial sites either. You have to offer something of value to users, but you also need to offer something unique. Certain content naturally attracts links because it triggers psychological and emotional responses—pride, sharing, newsworthiness, and so on. Leverage these triggers and create a compelling reason for visitors who can influence web content (writers, publishers, bloggers, etc.) to reference your work, and your link growth efforts will be a success.

Great link building comes from a simple idea: “Build great stuff, tell everyone about it, and motivate them to share.”