Anchor text is the set of words you see which are connected with a link. Most often, these words describe what the link is about and are very important for optimisation. The anchor text associated with your link should be specifically requested and not identical across all sites. Recently, Google changed the way it ranks sites to remove the influence of links where the links all have the same anchor text. To maintain the value of the incoming links you create, varying the words associated with links to your site is important. Anchor text does need to be relevant, keyword rich and yet employ natural language. Campaigns should be run over time, as temporal trends in linking activity are a ranking factor.

Requesting links and link exchanges are often first ports of call in a link building campaign. Use the linkdomain:competitor.co.uk -site:competitor.co.uk command in Yahoo! Site Builder to uncover where your competitor (competitor.co.uk) is getting links from and use those sites as the start of your campaign. By targeting these places, you increase the likelihood of getting a link and can piggy-back on the work your competitor has already done. Additional places to target for links are suppliers and those who you supply.

It is inadvisable to seek links from industries outside your own, or include too many outgoing links from your site to unrelated sectors. Should you choose to do this, it will have an impact on what search engines consider your site relevant and authoritative for.

Seek partnerships with members of the community and offer something back to the community you serve. If you are a marketing site, for example, you might get a marketing expert to contribute an article or answer a couple of questions each month in exchange for some high profile links out to their site. These questions and answers can then form the basis of a knowledge base for the community. This can help you gain links from those asking questions (ask for a link in exchange for the experts time) as well as others who find this knowledge base and link to it. Creating a corporate blog can offer an outlet for this information as well as interesting information about the company.

This leads in to linkbait, a term much bandied about. Linkbait is an article or blog post created for the purpose of adding knowledge to the community, or inflaming readers.  Appealing to people’s sense of humor often results in links to the humorous page. By adding an article on the ‘ten silliest things said in a courtroom’ (for lawyers), ‘twenty ways people cheat on taxes’ (for those in finance), ‘top ten silly commercials’ (marketing/advertising) or something similar, you may even make it on to digg.com.

Partnering with a forum that relates to your subject matter can also help increase links and traffic. By partnering, you alleviate the technical worries associated with maintaining a forum, get links in from the forum, gain potential customers from the forum and send them some members as well as a few links. Combined with corporate blogging or linkbait on your site, it can help drive organic link building.

Linking in a B2B environment is a long term strategy and not a quick fix. With some creativity, patience, ingenuity and partnerships, you can create a long-lasting natural link building strategy that mostly runs itself.

Judith Lewis is an in-house SEO/SEM working for Centaur Communications Limited