Link Building is where many companies fail in their SEO.  Link building is a mix of art and science and where many traditional SEOs fail because it requires the type of personality a marketer would typically have, not a web designer/coder.  While difficult, time consuming, and sometimes extremely frustrating link building has become one of, if not the most important piece of SEO. Almost anyone can handle taking care of on site SEO so to differentiate yourself and rank where you want in the Search Engines you need to get high quality links.  LinkedIn while not an actually a source of valuable links because they are no-followed is a valuable and robust platform for finding high quality links.

Everyone knows that they can put a link to their site or blog in their linkedIn profile and most SEOs and marketers who are worth having around know that these links do not provide link juice because they are no-followed, meaning LinkedIn has told the search engines that they do not endorse the link.  Believe it or not this is a good thing because if this were not the case SPAMMY SEOs would simply create hundreds and thousands of fake profiles and create links to their site.  While LinkedIn’s built in profile is not a valuable link the LinkedIn world is a great resource to start looking for linking opportunities.

One of the best ways I have found to use LinkedIn for my clients is to look at their recommendations.  The recommendations section in LinkedIn allows users to have other LinkedIn users to write a short blurb about their experience with that individual and give their review of that persons skills and or business.  These people have already said that they like that person and their work.  These should become the first targets on your list for links.  Before reaching out to these individuals first do some analysis of their sites.  Look at both their corporate sites and blogs and see how authoritative they are and how well they rank themselves.  You will be wasting your time if you are asking for links on sites that are not ranked well themselves because they will provide very little juice to your site.  Next look at what the linking opportunities are on those sites.  This could be resources, blog roll, guest blog, etc.

Next is the hard part, you need to actually get in contact with these people.  While I will not go into details on this and save it for a later post, it should be done with an email and a follow up phone call and make sure you have articulated your argument for why the link would be appropriate or beneficial for both sides.  These requests are a good start for anyone just getting started in link building because  you will get less resistance because the individual you are reaching out to already has shown they approve of the person or site you want the link to.

This will give you a good start for getting some links quickly and give you some needed practice in how to approach others for links.