Link building expert Eric Ward gave some informative tips on link building basics at SES San Jose.

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Ward touched on five areas of link building.

He said there are two core audiences for your links, people who can click them and search engines that count, analyze and judge them.

The majority of people are looking for links hoping the search engines will reward them for those links with higher rankings.

While that is usually true not every site should approach link building the same way.

He then spoke on link type and link value. Links that help with direct click traffic can generate temporary buzz, like Yahoo Picks or Forbes BOTW.

Links that improve search engine rankings will be those that the engines see as having value and quality.

Effective link building is a blend between SEO/SEM and public relations. SEO is a more technical process oriented task dealing with coding and algorithms.

Online public relations is a human process. Some authoritative links can only be received through one to one person-to-person communication, which does not have anything to do with SEO.

Trustworthy and authoritative links can be different for different sites.

Ward said in his opinion that authoritative links come from sites that can be algorithmically validated as being trustworthy. They are usually not reciprocated and will not have the same descriptive anchor text. Authoritative links will appear to be organic.

In closing he said that some of the most valuable links will not appear on Web sites, but that they appear in email based communication. There are a good number of trustworthy editors who write about and link to Web sites.

While search engines cannot count email based links they are great links to receive and can send quality visitors to your site.

SES San Jose Link Building