Link building is undoubtedly one of the central aspects of search engine optimization, if not thew single most important aspect. The process of link building is defined as generating backlinks for your site through various methods including social bookmarking, web 2.0 blogs, and providing quality content that is worthy of being linked to. There is a lot of confusion surrounding link building and SEO, particularly in regards to whether it should be done using software or manual methods. In actuality, a mixture of manual and automated techniques should be utilized to maximize productivity and avoid appearing to be a robot in the eye’s of the search engines. Although abnormally hasty link building is discouraged in the SEO community, there are ways to build links fast without being penalized by Google and other search engines.
Diversification
Diversification is absolutely necessary when building links quickly, because search engines tend to disregard links when there are a lot of them coming from the same site. The best way to diversify your link building structure is to build what are known as link wheels, which link a network of sites in a related niche together to bring page rank to the main site that is linked to by all of the pages. The easiest way to do this without purchasing a lot of sites is to use free web 2.0 properties like blogs, many of which already have a significant amount of PR themselves. Another way to diversify your link structure is to engage in “deep” link building, which establishes backlinks to every page on your site, rather than just the home page.
Outsourcing vs Automation
This is a heated debate in the field of SEO, however experienced webmasters know that automation can be just as good as outsourcing when used correctly. Every task on the internet can be automated via pre-programmed macros and scripts that remove the hassle of performing mundane repetitive tasks on a daily basis. Paying someone to do these takes would not make sense when you could hire a programmer to create a macro that will easily replace that employee with a one-time investment. The only tasks involved with SEO that require outsourcing are writing and web design, however some people even use scripts to spin content from other sites and still rank nicely in the search engines.
Consistency
If you want to get the most out of to your SEO campaign then you need to be consistent, but not to consistent as to arise suspicion in search engine algorithms. Search engines are designed to detect fraudulent and spam-like activity, so it is important to maintain a reasonable amount of backlinks each day without going overboard. Although consistency is important when building backlinks, quickly, it is not nearly as imperative as diversification, as search engines are forgiving of massive amounts of links as long as the page content is worthy and the links originate from diverse and unique sources. For example, a viral video on a page about a recent news trend could easily receive thousands of backlinks overnight form tons of blogs around the internet without being penalized by Google. If your site is relatively new and does not yet have the daily traffic to substantiate that kind of link building, then search engines may become suspicious.