Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is like a race and in any race learning from your competitors makes you a better runner. You need to decide your speed and make your plans for the next step based on the speed and strategy of your competitors.

Every SEO expert starts with link building to optimize the website. Quality link is one of the most important factors in SEO. Rather than trying to get more back links we should concentrate on getting quality linksbecause only through quality link building you can top listing in Google and other major search engines. Link building is one of the major aspect that makes a Website visible in Google. You can spend thousands of dollars to hire a SEO analyst for on-site optimization of your Website. However, without links pointing to your Website you will not gain the trust necessary to rank well especially, if the keyword is competent.

What is a quality link building?

Link building is the process of getting high quality inbound (incoming) links from other Websites. Basically link building is of 3 types –

1. One way Link Building

One-way links are the links from various Websites pointing to your Website but they do not receive a backlinkfrom your site. One way links can act wonders to optimize your Website and increase your link popularity in leading search engines like Google, yahoo and Bing etc.

2. Reciprocal Link Building:

Reciprocal link is the process of link exchange between two sites to ensure mutual benefit. Web masters also submit their sites to various reciprocal link exchange directories and get listed in directories to achieve higher ranking. In return, they also need to place the link of directories on their Website. Reciprocal link is an easy way for link building and ensure higher ranking.

3. Three Way Link Building

Getting three way link exchanges for your Website will be great. Some Webmasters own multiple Websites. During link building they will place your link in one of their sites or multiple sites. And in return you will place some other Website’s link on your Website.

Competitor research:

If you are in the process of high quality link building for your Website , you first need to find out where from your competitor is getting the links. Verifying this is a very easy task for any search engine optimization consultant. All you need to do id to type in “ link:www.competitor domain.com” in yahoo or Google to get list of all inbound link to their site. Once you have the list you need to select the quality links from it.

Identifying and analyzing quality links is not a difficult process. You need to check the page rank and relative linking of the Websites from where you competitor is getting the links. You can use a tool to do it but for 100% accuracy you have to do it manually. It is a time taking process and that is the reason most SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION CONSULTANT skip this stage. But, it is a very important and necessary stage for planning the SEO strategy.

If you want to list your website on the first page of Google but don’t have the time to do link building and competitor analysis, hire a SEO CONSULTANT to boost the ranking of your website organically.