Link building is one of the most important parts of any good SEO plan. Your success in optimizing your blog for search engines as well as generating traffic to it depends almost exclusively on link building. But, where do you start? How do you go about building links to your blog?… its pretty simple really, you just have to build links that point to your blog from a variety of places.
Here are 11 link building strategies that will help you achieve a higher search engine ranking while increasing targeted traffic to your blog:
1- Web directories
This is one of the oldest and most popular ways of link building. There are hundreds of web directories out there. A simple search for web directories on Google will give you a massive numbers of directories to submit your links to. There are two kinds of directories, free and paid ones. Although it is nearly impossible (well, maybe not impossible, but very hard and time consuming!) for search engines to differentiate between paid links and links acquired for free, it has been said that it is best to stay away from paid directories.
2- Article directories
A simple yet effective method for link building. Write and submit as many articles as you can to as many article directories as you can. This takes a lot of time and effort, but its well worth it. Search engines like Google hold many article directories like ezine to be an authoritative site. A link back from such a site can greatly increase your ranking and help you in SEO. If you don’t have time to write unique articles to submit, go ahead and use the same articles from your own blog. I simply developed a style of writing where I write my blog posts as if they were articles intended to be published on article directories. That way, I don’t have to change anything and I can quickly use the same articles to submit to article sites and build backlinks.
3- Link bait content
Link-bait refers to content that readers find so compelling that they go to any length to link to it and share it with other people. Its by far the easiest way to get thousands of quality backlinks that will grow on their own without you doing any work.
4- Citation-based licensing agreement content
If you’ve ever used a free WP theme, then you know what I am talking about. Its the link in the bottom of the theme that upon downloading it you agree to keep intact. Now imagine how many other people in the world might download that same theme, and you can begin to see the huge amounts of backlinks that could be created by that one theme.
This method is very powerful, as it has the potential to keep building links for you for years and years to come. You can do the same with articles, e-books, software, website templates, photos, videos, graphics and etc. To ensure that people leave your link intact, you can use Creative Commons Attribution system to license your product. It will make it illegal for other people to use your product without leaving your link intact.
5- Online forums
Almost all online forums allow members to place links in their profile and also as signatures which will be shown alongside every thread you start or reply to. Although a link is a link, try to use forums related to your niche, as search engines tend to put more weight on links from relevant high authority sites.
6- Guest posting
By guest posting on other related blogs and websites not only do you build links to your own site, your blog might also enjoy an increase in traffic, especially if the site you guest post on receives a great amount of traffic itself.
7- Commenting On blogs
While it’s been said that links from comment sections of blogs don’t carry much weight with the search engines, none-the-less they can effect both your SEO and traffic. So, it is not a bad idea to build links by making relevant and genuine comments on related blogs whenever you can.
8- RSS submission
There are many RSS directories out there that you can submit your links to. When it comes to links, usually quality matters more than quantity, meaning a link from a high authority site matters more than 20 links from other lower ranking sites. But, since it takes only a few seconds to submit your links to hundreds of RSS directories using an RSS aggregator, it is ok to sacrifice quality for quantity.
9- Social bookmarking
While link building with social bookmarking sites is almost like RSS directories, there are a few powerful social bookmarking sites that search engines tend to put a lot of weight on. Take Digg as an example, there are many stories where a link back from digg has moved a blogger’s blog from few pages down the search results to the first page of Google for the related keyword it was bookmarked for. There are many social bookmarking sites out there that submitting a link to each one would probably take you a whole day, thankfully, there are many good social bookmarker tools and plug-ins out there that will automate the process for you. Although, I would suggest to bookmark your links manually to at least the few top social bookmarking sites such as Dig and Stumble upon.
10- Yahoo Answers
Getting backlinks from Yahoo Answers can be a little tricky. Because of all the spamming, it is now harder to get links stick on Yahoo Answers. However, if you do manage to get a link or two from YA, almost instantly you will see a rise in your traffic and eventually your ranking. The best way to use YahooAnswers is to genuinely contribute and help as much as you can. Don’t answer questions just so you can place your link in it. Also, while no one knows this for sure, it is believed that backlinks from Yahoo Answers will only be counted if the question gets at least 10 or more answers. Regardless, a link or two from Yahoo Answers is definitely worth the hassle.
11- Craigslist and other classifieds
Ok, you are right! Backlinks from craigslist won’t help with SEO since links placed on CL are not dofollow. But, Craigslist is one of the most visited sites in the world, a well placed ad can bring you an extremely high amounts of traffic. Unfortunately, as with Yahoo Answers, spammers have almost killed CL for the rest of us. But, you can still take advantage of it if you play by the rules.
Another good classified site worth using is BackPage.com, which does give dofollow links. BackPage receives a fair amount of traffic and while it may not beat CL, it can certainly give you some traffic and SEO value.
There are many ways you can build links
These are only a few link building methods that most bloggers tend to use and have more success rate with. Believe me, I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface yet. Look around you, be creative, there are many ways you can build links. The only thing I would strongly advise against is spamming. I know sometimes the temptation to use spam tactics to get a lot of links, quickly, can be overwhelming, but spamming will never work and even if you do mange to get a few links here and there, it wont last for long. Sooner or later, they will find and delete your links. Not only that, in some case they might report you to the search engines or what not, and not only you will lose your links, you might lose your search engine ranking, your site will be delisted and all of your hard work will be gone in a matter of seconds.
Link building is a powerful tool, not only is it amongst some of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your blog, it is also the most vital part of any good SEO plan. Use it wisely and you will see an increase in your search engine ranking, along with a surge of good quality targeted traffic.