Bing is the new search engine lauched by Microsoft in June 2009.

The search engine published a document about link building which focuses on how Bing deals with inbound links, The document can help webmasters to get better links for Google, Yahoo and other search engines. The most important points of Bing’s document are -

The importance of link building

“Link building is a very important form of self-promotion on the Web. You contact webmasters of other, related websites and let them know your site exists. If the value that you have worked so hard to instill in your site is evident to them, they will assist their own customers by linking back to your site. That, my friend, is the essence of link building.”

In other words, reciprocal linking is fine. They also remind webmasters that link building is an ongoing process:

“Think of link building as your chance to build your reputation on the Web. As your website is likely one of your business’ most valuable assets, consider link building to be a primary business-building exercise. Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution. You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time. Good things come to those who wait (and work smartly!).”

Warning -

The following things will get your website in trouble

Just like Google and other major search engines, Bing doesn’t like to be cheated. If they detect unnatural linking patterns, your website might be penalized. The following things can trigger search engine filters:

1. Your website get a lot of additional inbound links a very short time.

2. Many links that point to your website are from unrelated websites or blog comments.

3. Your web pages contain hidden links.

4. You get links from links farms or automated link exchange systems.

5. Paid links point to your website

Getting inbound links requires some work. The Bing engineers are very clear about this fact:

“Make no mistake: getting legitimate and highly valuable, inbound links is not a couch-potato task.”

All links are NOT equal. Some links will surely be considered more important as far as Google’s algorithm is concerned. The following criteria must be satisfied in order for a link to be considered a quality link -

• How relevent the linking page is with the subject matter of your site.

  A site selling sports goods linking to a real estate site, will do good to neither of them.

• The PageRank of the site pointing to you site.

  Ideally, the pagerank of the site linking to your’s site should be higher. But if pagerank is equal or less than that of your site, you should go ahead with link exchange, provided the subject matter of both sites match closely.

• How relevent the anchor text to the page it links to.
• The number of other links on the page pointing to your site, the less, the better.

Always remember , links from a unrelated site are pretty much worthless

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.