Link Building Strategies
Posted on September 28, 2008
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization |
Link Building Strategies
Link building is important in search engine optimization or SEO because it plays a huge role in how the search engines rank your website for keywords. The more links pointing to your website, the higher the rank of your website. And of course this means more trafifc.
There are many ways to to build links to your web site. One very effective linking method is to comment on blogs. Blog commenting is very easy because all you have to do is find blogs that are in your niche and read one of their posts and then make a contributing comment. As you add a comment to the post on the blog, you are able add your web site link as well. It is very important to make sure that your comments are useful and noteworthy. What this does is attract attention from readers and possibly send them to your web site. If they find your comment interesting or beneficial, they will follow your link to your website. It’s also just good karma to add something that contributes to the blog instead of just saying oh that’s great or that’s a nice blog or that’s a nice post. These types of blog comments are useless. Nobody will read a post that just says oh, that sounds great, or I like what you said. That’s why it’s important to write something that contributes to the post. Blog commenting is an effective way to build links to your web site or blog. So the next question is “How many links can I get by commenting on blogs?” Believe it or not, you can get a lot of links by commenting on blogs. If you work at it everyday consistently, you can build up to 4000 links or more per year. The easy way to do this is to find 10 blogs per day and comment on one post. So this would amount to 300 links per month or 3600 links per year. Blog commenting is just one way to build links to your web site. There are many other ways to build links.
Web Directories
Web directories are actually link directories which contain thousands of web site links. A web directory is like a library of links categorized by topic. Web directories used to be useful for getting traffic to your web site, but now they are only used to gain links. In order to get a link from a web directory, you must submit your web site or blog to the directory for approval. This is a very easy process, but it is very tedious. You have to fill out a Add Link form and submit it on the web. There are over 10,000 web directories. Submitting your web site or blog to 10,000 Web directories would take a very long time because you have to submit your blog or web site individually to each web directory. Most web directories are free for submission, but some are not. Some web directories require that you pay a fee in order to be listed. I don’t believe in ever paying for a listing on any web directory. In my opinion it is just not worth paying a fee to be listed in a web directory when there are plenty of free web directories. Web directories are a good source for back claims even though it is a very tedious process to submit your website to each one. However, there is an easy way to accomplish this. The easiest way to do web directory submissions is with a piece of software called Directory Submitter. Directory Submitter can speed up the process of submitting your web site to web directories. Directory Submitter saves your user information in the submission form. This speeds up the web directory submission time tremendously. You should be able to submit your website to a 100 - 200 web directories and a short period of time. Directory Submitter works very well at this and is very inexpensive. I personally use Directory Submitter and have used it for a number of years and I’m very pleased with its performance. If you had to submit your web site to 2000 web directories manually, it could take you a month or two to complete. Using directory submitter, you can submit your web site to 2000 web directories in two days or less or if you choose, you could pay someone to submit your website to 2000 Web directories for about $60. When you submit your website to web directories, not every web directory will except or approve your web site. Approximately 75 to 80% of the web directories will approved your submission. But it is definitely worthwhile to do.
Web Forums
Another great way to get back links to your web site is to use web forums. There are literally thousands of web forums on the web. You can join any of these web forums for free. When you register at a web forum, you’ll be able to create a profile for yourself. In this profile, you can add a signature which will appear on the bottom right of your forum thread or post.. Your signature can consist of anything even the URL to your web site or blog. So what this does is add your web site or blog link to every post that you make on the web forum. So if you’re pretty active on the web forum, you could have a 1000 or 2000 links in one forum. So what your strategy will be is; you join one new forum each week and post ten threads (posts or replies) to each forum per day. Whenever you post a thread at a forum, make sure that you write something interesting and useful. This will attract readers to your web site. Never spam a web forum. You will be banned from the forum if you do so.
Organic Linking
Organic linking is defined as natural linking. Organic linking occurs when a reader links to your site because they liked it or found it useful. You really cannot control this for the most part however there are ways to encourage readers to link to your website. First off, the first thing to do is write high quality content. This wiil encourage readers to link to you. There are a number of other techniques which will encourage readers to link to you. If you write posts that have information that is too large to remember, like long lists, the readers will be more inclined to link to your website. Another technique is to write something contraversial. This will cause excitement and some emotions which will spread like wild fire. This is good for link juice, as it’s sometimes called. Experiments or tests are sometimes good for organic linking or anything that is extreme. Give your posts some thought and ask yourself, “Why would I want to link to this post?”. Again as I have said before, try to put yourself in the shoes of a reader. This will usually work for any situation.
Link Luv
Link luv is the mind set of linking to others just because you enjoyed the website or article. I read tons of blogs and sometimes write articles about what I’ve read and then place a link to the website or article. I do this with no expectation of anything in return. However, I do recieve many links from website owners who want to say thanks for the article and link. This is a great thing to do. It’s good Karma.
Paid Links
I never do these. Not ever. The search engines do not like paid links and you don’t need to pay for links. Yo can get links for free.
Well I think this is enough for one post. Look for more to come.
Comments
6 Responses to “Link Building Strategies”
Leave a Reply
Good post.
Not too sure I fully agree with the paid links part. I know search engines dont agree with them, but truthfully you can pick up some great, high quality links for a few dollars.
i agree with what SEO Pete’s said.
worth to try with a risk maybe.
Great article, I think I am going to buy that directory submitter here in a minute. But I have a question, I get a few requests from people who want to swap links and when I go to their site, they like have 2 pages of content and 8 pages links, what’s up with that?
Does it do any good to link with these guys? I am not really sure why the search engines like links so much, I can’t think of a time when I actually clicked the links tab and it was worth doing.
Again great article and thanks for the link to directory submitter.
Darwin
Hi Darwin,
Thanks!!
Directory Submitter is a wonderful product and it’s really easy to use. You will be able to submit 100’s of links in a short period of time. You can also add more web directories to it. I have something like 6,000 web directories in mine.
I love it!
I would recommend NOT linking with those kinds of sites. Google will not like those kinds of back links (link farms).
The reason you want links (back links) to your website is because it affects your ranking in the search engines. The more back links you have the higher your placement in the search engines. It’s like votes for your site.
Thanks for your comments!
Kevin
you can encourage organic linking thru commenting on similar blogs with good comment content. check out-
http://www.blogtogreat.com/2008/09/blog-commenting.html
thanks
carael knight…
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