… or link development as I like to call it… 
Yeah, I know, long time no blog… sorry to have been away so long, but today I want to speak on some basics of link building or link development.

To many, this will be old info, but there are newbies always coming up the ranks that could benefit from this info. 
If you think of link building in tiers or steps, there is the initial step of research. Researching link opportunities that are not only reputable links, but will benefit or bring visitors to your site.

What do you look for in a potential quality link? 

• Compatibility 
• Page Rank 
• Back link count 

Link Compatibility:
The site link MUST be compatible and related in some way - if your site is about baby gifts, don’t attempt to obtain a link from a travel site. It won’t be counted… that’s the place the reciprocal linking fiasco has evolved to. Reciprocal linking is STILL quite effective if you reciprocate with reputable, compatible, related quality sites.

Page Rank:
Check the Page Rank - make sure the PR bar is not grey!! Stay away from greyed-out PR bars – grey PR bars can indicate a problem with the site’s reputation. Now, regarding PR: if the site is new, it will have no PR, but if it’s a GOOD, reputable, quality site, the PR will change in time, so why not do an exchange? Better yet, if a site has a higher PR, it’s probably been around longer and may be an even more effective link because it’s probably been acquiring back links as well.

QUALITY Back Links:
Checking the QUALITY of the backlinks in the back link count is one of those things folks sometimes forget to check – not just the QUANTITY. That’s where more research comes in. God knows there’s software out there that will gather the QUANTITY of back links for you, but no software can do the research required to explore if that link is a QUALITY potential link for your site. You will not skip this part if you are link building correctly to not just link build, but link develop.

More next time on the next tier of link building…