Link building in Newcastle, NSW: other websites vouching for yours.

It is getting other websites to link to yours. Google reads a link as a vote, and it weighs who is voting far more heavily than how many votes there are.

When a website links to yours, Google treats it as that site putting its name to you. That is the whole idea, and it is why a link from a Newcastle industry body carries weight that a link from a directory nobody reads does not.

What decides what a link is worth

• Who is linking. A site with its own standing in a subject or an area. A page nobody visits passes on what it has, which is nothing.
• Whether it makes sense. A link from a local club you sponsor reads as real. A link from an unrelated site in another country reads as bought, because it usually was.
• Where on the page it sits. Inside the writing, put there because it belonged there. Lists of links in a footer pass close to nothing.
• What the words say. The words that carry the link tell Google what the page is about, and a hundred identical ones look exactly as arranged as they are.

For most local searches the listing and the pages do the work. Links decide the harder ones, where several businesses have already done everything else right.

A business that has fixed its listing, collected reviews and built a page for every service will already be doing well on most Newcastle searches. Links are what separates the businesses that have all done that.

The competitive searches here are the ones with money behind them. The trades and services where a single job is worth thousands are the ones where several businesses have an agency, and where the ordinary results move slowly.

The good news for a local business is that the bar is lower than in a capital city. A handful of genuine Newcastle links is a realistic target, and it is not something a competitor can buy their way past quickly.

Sponsorships, industry associations, suppliers who list their installers, local news, and the organisations you already deal with. All of them are real, and all of them are hard for a competitor to copy.

The list of links a Newcastle business can realistically get is shorter and more obvious than the industry makes it sound. Almost all of it comes out of relationships the business already has.

Where they come from

• Clubs and teams you sponsor. Junior sport, a surf club, a community event. Most list their sponsors on a page and most will link if asked.
• Industry associations. Member directories are one of the few directory types that still count, because membership means something.
• Suppliers and manufacturers. Anybody whose product you install or stock. Approved installer and stockist pages exist and they are underused.
• Local news and community sites. A story about a job, a hire, a milestone. Newcastle publications run these and they are reachable.
• Anybody you already work with. Accountants, other trades, referral partners. A page naming who you work with, on both sides.

Charities are the honest version of the sponsorship route: the money is going somewhere useful and the link is a side effect rather than the purchase.

Google's rules treat paying for links that pass ranking as spam, and sites get treated accordingly. The trouble is that the links outlast the agency that sold them.

Bought links are sold everywhere and they are cheap, which is what makes the offer tempting. Google is direct about them in its spam policies: buying links that pass ranking is against the rules.

The part that gets underplayed is what happens afterwards. The links stay pointing at your site after you stop paying, and cleaning them up is slower and more expensive than getting them was.

There is a legitimate version of paid placement, and the difference is a technical one: a sponsored or advertising link is marked so it does not pass ranking, which is what Google asks for. An arrangement that refuses to mark it is selling you the risk.

We do not buy links for the businesses we work with, which is worth saying plainly on a page about link building.

Start with the relationships you already have, get the easy listings right, then give people something worth linking to. It is slow, deliberate work and there is no volume shortcut that survives.

1. Write down who you already deal with

Suppliers, associations, clubs, referral partners, anybody you sponsor. This list is where most of the achievable links are, and it takes half an hour.

2. Ask the ones that already list people

Approved installer pages, member directories, sponsor pages. Most of these exist already and simply do not have you on them.

3. Get the basic listings consistent

Your business name, address and phone written identically everywhere you appear. These are not powerful links and the consistency is what counts.

4. Give somebody a reason to write about you

A finished job worth photographing, a local hire, a community sponsorship. Newcastle publications need stories and most businesses never offer one.

5. Publish something worth pointing at

A page that answers a question properly earns links quietly over years. It is the slowest route and the only one that keeps working without you.

6. Keep a record

Where each link came from and when. It is the only way to tell whether the effort is going anywhere, and it takes a spreadsheet.

Slower than anything else in search work. Links arrive in ones and twos, the effect shows on the competitive searches rather than the easy ones, and what you gain holds.

The order it happens in

• The obvious ones get collected. Suppliers, associations, sponsorships. The links already available for the asking.
• The ordinary results start moving. On the harder searches first, because the easy ones were already decided by the listing and the pages.
• It compounds. A page other people point at gets pointed at more. This is the part that takes years and is the reason established sites are hard to shift.

If somebody promises a number of links a month, they are describing something bought, because earned ones do not arrive on a schedule.

Ask where the links will come from by name, whether any of them are paid, what happens to them if you stop, and what they will show you each month. The first question answers most of the others.

We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.

• Where will the links come from? Named sites, before anything starts. An answer about high authority domains without names is not an answer.
• Is any of this paid placement? Ours is not. If part of an arrangement is, it has to be marked as sponsored, and that is worth seeing in writing.
• What happens to the links if I stop? Earned ones stay because they were never rented. Rented ones disappear, and that tells you which kind they were.
• What do you show me each month? The sites that started linking, by name and date. A count on its own says nothing about quality.
• Am I locked in? Ours runs month to month and always has. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

The relationship half of this is genuinely better done by the owner, because the owner is the one who knows the club, the supplier and the association. We usually end up doing the asking and the recording.