I’ve always looked at SEO link building as the process of getting links to your site from other sites that are well respected by the search engines. I figured there was only one real kind of link building. After reading Dan Thies’ article Mastering Both Kinds of Link Building - Authority & Reputation, I’m looking at link development through different eyes.

Dan article focuses on two distinct kinds of link building. They are:

1. Authority Link Development - the process of getting authority or “trust” from the search engines because you have enough links to be included in the visible search results (the top 1000)
2. Reputation Link Development - the process of getting links with the right anchor text pointed to the right pages…essential for getting ranked well for particular keywords.

Dan argues that these two types of link development should be done separately rather than together to make link development easier…and who doesn’t want link building to be easier?

The article also dives into the importance of internal linking strategies, especially when it comes to getting your pages the right “reputation.” It sounds like this can be a powerful tool since:

Ive seen countless examples, where my students are able to take control of a huge share of search engine referrals in their own markets, simply by making better use of internal linking. In fact, some of our greatest success stories involve students who put almost no emphasis on anchor text in their link building campaigns, and focused instead on creating more unique content within their own sites.

Sounds pretty awesome, eh? Check out Dan’s whole article here - he also has some free resources available if you are looking for more information on SEO and link building.

[Thanks to April for another good piece of "blodder" (blog+fodder)]