As you can imagine, with the importance of links in SEO the topic has been discussed quite a bit. In fact, there are guides, blogs, and even businesses devoted entirely to the subject. So, rather than try to list every method you could use to increase the number of links to your site, I figured I’d give you my five favorites.
Submit to Directories
Directory submission was quite popular a few years ago but has recently fallen out of favor. The number of worthless directories out there led Google to largely devalue links from many directories across the web.
Luckily, there are still several high quality directories that provide valuable links. The most popular are Yahoo’s Directory (paid), Best of the Web (paid) and Dmoz.org (free but can be difficult to get into), however, niche or industry specific sites can also provide quite a bit of value.
A common complaint about directory submission is that it’s time consuming. While that’s true, there are services out there that will do the leg work for you.
My favorite, Directory Maximizer, will hand submit your site to a list of over 1,000 SEO friendly directories at a rate of $14 per every 100 directories. And, you can select an option to spread out the submissions over several weeks so you don’t end up with 100’s of new inbound links in a single day, all raising red flags over at the Googleplex.
Blog
While this might seem like an obvious point, you’d be surprised how many sites still don’t have blogs attached to them. Quite simply, if you’re site doesn’t have a blog on it, it should. I’ve heard people talk about how they think blogs make the sites look less professional and how it’s a hassle trying to keep them updated etc etc etc. Frankly, thats BS.
If you can have a site on the topic, you can and should have a blog. If you don’t want to write on a regular basis, pay someone to do it for you. You’d be surprised what kind of quality content you can get for a few bucks.
No, having a blog does not magically create new links to your site. But blogs, even a bad ones, attract links fairly naturally.
Link Out
Once you have a blog set up, another easy way to gain more links is to link out to other blogs. Whether it’s through trackback links on a post, through the dashboard in the Wordpress admin panel, or sites like Technorati, the blogger you link to will probably see the link. And, as the law of reciprocity states, they’ll be much more likely to link back to you in the future because of it.
Syndicate Content
Another easy method of link building is to create content to place on other sites. Whether it’s guest posting on another blog, or submitting submitting articles to sites like ezinearticles.com, trading content for links is win/win propositions. The webmaster gets fresh content, you get a link.
People often ask how to go about finding these opportunities but the answer’s pretty simple: ask. If you regularly read a blog in your niche and think you could provide useful content, send the blogger an email asking to guest post. I’ve had content published on blogs with tens of thousands of readers, simply because I bothered to ask.
Great Content
With the advent of Web 2.0 and the social media revolution, the spread of information has become even easier. Linkbait, viral content, pillar content, no matter what tag you slap on it, the concept is the same: create remarkable content that people want to share with others. Chris Garrett calls it “Flagship Content” and explains it like this:
Flagship Content … builds its own momentum and delivers targeted visitors back to you. It works as an ambassador for your blog and for your brand. Flagship Content is content that represents you in the most positive light. It’s an authority builder.
This content can take all sorts of forms (ebooks, guides, resource lists, tools, etc) but in the online world, sharing your content and delivering targeted vistors means one thing: links.
While some are easier than others, each of these 5 methods will help increase the number of links pointing to your website. Even if potential buyers don’t value inbound links as much as an SEO would, the results produced by those links are certain to catch their eye.
Not only do new links provide traffic when clicked, they also help increase the amount of search engine traffic your site receives. Whether your site is monetized with ads or products, increased traffic translates into increased revenue, and revenue is valued by every potential site buyer I’ve ever seen.
More Link Building Resources
January 29th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Thank you for a great article. You described the most common link building tactics that will absolutely be useful for those e-marketers who is just starting a link building campaign. I’ve been doing some SEO for our company’s website I must say I like the directory submission, article submission and blog commenting most. With the use of automatic submission tools, directory submission, article submission and blog commenting are made quick and easy. Yes, writing articles requires time and efforts, but it’s possible to hire a writer to create the articles if one is not good at writing.
In general, a link building process should be well thought. Not all the sites are worth to get links from. It often happens that webmaters forget about their sites and just focus at obtaining as much inbound links as possible. As you wrote website content does matter much. Informative, regularly updated website has more chances to be linked to than a low quality site.
reply:February 8th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Ben, nice tips. The only one I find that’s somewhat iffy is the Directory submissions. Google has really clamped down on the link effectiveness of utilizing directories. In some cases I’ve seen sites perform worse after submitting to directories…even ones that are considered to be “good” ones in Google’s eyes. I think the only exception are directories like DMOZ.
reply:February 11th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
@Jon – nope. google also clamped down on them.
reply:February 12th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Jon and Streko, Google most definitely cracked down on directories and the value of the links they provide. However, I am still of the belief that there’s no such thing as bad inbound links, certainly not unless they are in incredible mass quantities. Also, lower end directory type links will help your link profile look a bit more natural should you decide to purchase higher quality optimized links… you know, not that I’d ever do that since it’s against Google’s guidelines.
reply:February 13th, 2009 at 11:30 am
I agree with Ben. Some of them certainly still pass value.
reply:March 12th, 2009 at 4:36 am
Well since directories do not always approve the new listings right away even if you submit to a bunch of directories at once chances are the links will appear over some period of time anyway.
*Shameless plug below*
reply:As an additional point in favor of directory linkbuilding, I have recently released an ebook about directory marketing detailing the process so that it becomes beneficial to any site in any market niche – see here: http://www.dirguide.info