Backlinks are still the most important ranking signal of Google, Bing and other search engines. Since Google’s Penguin update, bulk-link spam doesn’t work anymore and the quality of the backlinks has become more important than ever before.

A good plan will make your link building activities much more efficient. The following steps will help you to create a great plan for your 2013 link building campaigns:

Step 1: check the current state of your website
Check the status quo before you start with a new campaign. What makes your website linkworthy? Why should other websites link to your site? Do you know where your customers can be found on the web? Does your website offer content that interests your customers?

Step 2: set your goal
Getting more links is not a goal. Your link building campaign should contribute to the main goals of your  search engine optimization campaigns. For example, you could target these goals:

• Get at least 20 links from related websites that will deliver targeted visitors to my website.
• Getting at least 100 links from related websites that contain keywords that are related to my business to improve my search engine rankings.

Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and trackable.

Step 3: make sure that your website is linkworthy
The best link building campaign won’t work if your web pages aren’t linkworthy. Other websites won’t link to your website for no reason.

To create linkworthy content on your web pages, you could do the following:

• Improve existing content and make it more attractive.
• Use offline content of your company and make it available online.
• Interview people who are related to your business.

Linkable content is useful and interesting. Offer the answer to the questions that your customers ask, offer interesting facts about the products and services that you sell and show your website visitors why your company is better than your competitors. If it makes sense, include as many photos as possible.

Step 4: put your ideas to the test
Double check your linkworthy content. Do other people really care about this content? If the content is just about you, chances are that not many people will care.
Ask people inside and outside your company for feedback why your ideas will work and why your ideas won’t work.

Step 5: get things done
When you’ve finished step 1-4, it’s time to get things done. Locate good websites that could link to your website and contact the owners of these websites.

The link building tools in IBP can help you to find these links as efficiently as possible. IBP also helps you to get the contact information of the other websites and it helps you to keep track of your link building activities.

Getting good backlinks is the key to high rankings on Google and Yahoo/Bing. The plan above will help you to achieve your goals as quickly as possible.

Article by Axandra SEO software