Anyone with even the most fleeting interest in SEO knows that link building is a big deal for building your sites strength and reputation. The thing about link building is that the sites which are more popular and higher ranking already, find it far easier to get linked to. So what does the little guy do? Luckily there are plenty of ways to get creative with link building and with the right kind of attitude and a creative mind, you can go a long way.
Of course there are some methods which are better that others and some that are practically a waste of time, so unless you have unlimited resources and time for your link-building strategy, I’d suggest that you prioritise your link-building plans.
Get Social
Not so long ago the social scene was a nothing realm for SEO. However, with the exponential growth of social networking sites on the web, there was eventually no choice but to sit up and take notice. The fact of the matter is though that specifically, social media has little direct effect on SEO. Twitter links for instance are no-followed.
However, it’s all down to how SEO’s evolve to take advantage of this new realm of online interaction. And that’s exactly what it is, interaction. Having good content is great but it only has any real value when there are eyes on it. As such, getting your content and your name out in online social circles will allow you to build a reputation for your business which will eventually filter through inspiring others to link to like or tweet your content, thus giving your online brand awareness a boost. While Twitter links give you no strength, the increased brand awareness will give you a greater chance of inheriting links elsewhere.
Try creating accounts with some quality and some niche social media/bookmarking websites. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are the obvious choices as they have the largest numbers of subscribers and therefore the largest market for you to promote yourself. Bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit are another great avenue for promoting content from your blog.
One important point about social interaction is that it requires quite a bit of time and devotion. You’ll find that you inspire more views and links if you take the time to post regularly and not just link to content. Interaction will build the strength of your profiles and give your content more weight in the eye’s of other users.
Getting the Wallet Out
If you have the budget available for it, then a little monetary grease can certainly get the wheels in motion. By having a budget to put towards building links you can bypass much of the work required for other methods. However, the reason this isn't the norm for many businesses and especially good SEO, is that it's very lowly regarded by search engines. If a search engine finds that your site is paying for links then you stand a very good chance of getting your site bumped from the listings and even blacklisted.
Paying for such things as links and reviews seems a bit like cheating because for all intents and purposes it is. Links are supposed to be a vote for your site to judge it's quality. A political party which bought votes wouldn't be in office very long if someone found out, would they? Paying for links through some kind of link providing service is all well and good if it goes right, but a vast number of links from unrelated page rank 'zero' sites isn’t going to build you much strength and in the long run will put your site at risk of getting a bad reputation.
These paid links usually come in the form of Sponsored links and paid reviews. While this is the quickest method, the same things can be achieved without money by simply using a bit of ingenuity. Develop relationships with quality sites and recommend ideas that could benefit you both. You might find a site is happy to provide a review for you in exchange for some relevant service on your part. This kind of link building isn't cheating like paying. It just constituted good networking and business savvy.
Just be sure that you are approaching the right person. Ensure that their site and particularly where they’re publishing the review have good strength. They might have a strong site, but publishing your review in the dark recesses of their architecture will give it less strength and make it harder to find.
Be Creative
Creativity is the holy grail of link building as it is inspired content and ideas that will get people linking to you naturally. This is known as link bait. So in a somewhat ironic effort, I’m going to tell you how to be creative.
First and foremost comes good quality content. Google and Matt Cutts are so often spouting about how crucial good content is, whether it is on an ecommerce site, an information site, a regular post on a websites blog or an article for distribution. As such, make sure that you create something which people are going to want to link to. You should ensure that you’re up to date on all facets of your industry, that way you can give some useful and up to the minute insight, as well as some informed opinions. For more info, see our post on creating great blog content.
If you run an ecommerce site, holding a contest should be easier as you will have prizes readily available to you. Remember to be creative with your competition. Don’t just ask entrants to submit a form. That’s boring. Ask them to write an article on a funny or interesting topic in your industry. If you run a t shirt or clothes site, ask them to submit a design.
Be sure to advertise the competition well by using ads on your site, writing a blog and submitting to social sites. If you have a reasonable Twitter or Facebook following you will be able to instantly engage with a large number of people.
In terms of prizes try to come up with something original. If you run a site that sells custom design clothes, get a graphic designer to come up with a uniquely designed t shirt or outfit to be offered as the prize.
If you have some coding skill, why not create a custom blog theme or wordpress plug-in that can be downloaded from your site for free? Everybody loves something for free. You can apply a required link back to your site from within the theme or a requested link or article for using the plug-in.
On the far corner of creativity is viral advertising. With YouTube such a vast platform for viral videos, there is great potential available for the unusual, the funny and the downright bizarre. If you have your own YouTube channel it’s worth coming up with a few creative ideas.
Alternatively you can create videos for use on your site such as how-to’s. Not viral but useful.
Get Around
Aside from internal work, look into other areas and other websites for potential linking. That is after all where your good links will come from.
Guest posts are a great way to create useful content that can instantly give your site strength. If you have good experience writing for your own blog, there are plenty of sites out there which regularly host guest blogs. Find a site with good page rank that hosts guest articles based on your industry and check to see the page rank of the pages where articles have been published previously. Also ensure that they provide backlinks as part of the post or in the author bio and that they are not ‘no-followed’. Then find a way to approach them about writing a guest article.
Don’t just send a quick email saying you’d like to do it. Take some time to become familiar with their site and provide some ideas of potential articles you could write while introducing yourself in an email. A little more tact and insight shown will give you a far greater chance of a response.
Link Exchanges are another alternative but there is some debate over whether reciprocal links still carry much weight. Despite this, I believe it is still an area worth pursuing as even without much strength it is still a link back to your site that can potentially be clicked. A variation of reciprocal linking is to use a third site to provide the back link in a kind of linking three-way. This way the link to your first site won’t lose value as a basic swap.
Extras
There are several other common methods of link building which have less assured value. Linking out basically means providing links to relevant sites in the hope that they’ll track your link and keep your site in mind based on the apparent respect you have for their site. Wishful thinking.
Another idea is to create mini-blogs linked to your main site. I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a good idea as it basically constitutes link farming. If you have secondary blog already then by all means link back to your first site. The fact is however, if it is based on the same domain or IP search engines will most likely devalue your link. Also, several blogs thrown together for this purpose aren’t going to have much if any strength to pass on unless you spend a substantial amount of time working on them. I suggest dedicating more time to your primary blog and forgetting about this.
Last comes directory submissions and forum posts. Posting to forums can be useful in promoting yourself or your business as long as it is an industry related forum and you post regularly. However in terms of link building you might find yourself getting kicked off for being too blasé and the vast majority of forums ‘no-follow’ anyway. The same usually applies to commenting. Submitting to directories is vastly time consuming and there is never any guarantee of acceptance with little strength gained. These directories have countless links so any page strength gained could be split between 100’s of sites. Try spending your time more usefully be locating niche directories for your target industry and posting there. These are likely to have less links per page and the relevance will certainly help.
Social Networking image by jscreationzs and Bulb, 3D Chain and Business Graph images by Renjith Krishnan all courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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- Ramsay’s Web Wire – Issue #40: Sleet, Snow and SEO - December 3, 2010
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