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seobook

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By Aaron Wall and Andy Hagans.
Link Building… Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it’s still the trump card for higher rankings.
Many of us have been hoping that it would go away. In Brett Tabke’s 5/18 Robots.txt entry, he echoed a sentiment that many, many webmasters hold on to as a hope:

What happens to all those Wavers that think [i]Getting Links = SEO[/i] when that majority of the Google algo is devalued in various ways? Wavers built their fortunes on “links=seo”. When that goes away, the Wavers have zero to hold on to.

The pertinent questions:

1. Will link building still be very important for rankings in the medium term?
2. When will link popularity be devalued in favor of other algo elements (that are less tedious, from a webmaster’s point of view)?

The answers:

1. Sorry, but link building is still going to be the SEO trump card for the foreseeable future.
2. I wouldn’t hold your breath for search engine algorithms to place less importance on link popularity until the Semantic Web arrives, or maybe when HTTP gets replaced by a new protocol. Because links are still the basic connector, the basic relationship, on the Web. And for the forseeable future they’re going to be the easiest way for a computer program to judge the importance and trustworthiness of a Web page.

What will happen to the way search algorithms score links is already happening. The Google algo has become much more elegant and advanced, devaluing staggering amount of links that shouldn’t count, and placing more emphasis on trusted links. And the trust and juice given by those links is then verified by elements like user data, domain age, and other relatively hard-to-spoof factors.
But please, don’t fool yourself. Links that should count are still the key to rankings (in Google, at least — and MSN and Yahoo! are only a few short years behind). In that spirit, Aaron and I have created our 101 Ways to Build (and Not Build) Links. (Yeah, it just so happened that there were exactly 101!)
Oh, and mad props to our inspiration, 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies, one of the original authority documents on link building. It was just getting a bit rusty, that’s all (“Host your own Web Ring”?). Anyway, enjoy the update.

71 Good Ways to Build Links

Love for Lists

1. Build a “101 list”. These get Dugg all the time, and often become “authority documents”. People can’t resist linking to these (hint, hint).
2. Create 10 easy tips to help you [insert topic here] articles. Again, these are exceptionally easy to link to.
3. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic (see Mr Ploppy for inspiration).
4. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category.
5. Create a list of gurus/experts. If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the gurus may end up linking to your site or saying thanks. (Sometimes flattery is the easiest way to strike up a good relationship with an “authority”.)

Hire Help

This list is of course quite long, because there are many ways to build links & link building can be a tiresome, expensive & arduous task. If you have plenty of cash but are scarce on time outsourcing all or part of your link building campaigns can prove to be a quite profitable business strategy.
6. Hire a publicist. Good old fashioned ‘PR’ (not PageRank) can still work wonders. Paul Graham wrote a great article titled The Submarine which highlights how PR firms get media exposure. Be warned that many PR firms can be quite hit or miss with their promotions & even some of the “successes” may not stick around long. If permanent links are your main goal, make sure that is clearly articulated to the PR firm in advance, as some PR firms sponsor temporary payola content that disappears about a month after your check clears. 😉
7. Hire a consultant. Yes, you can outsource link building. Just make sure to go with someone good. If you want low-risk high-quality links Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Ninjas& Garrett French’s Citations Labs are probably the only SEOs firms doing it at scale. Their link building packages start at $5,000 a month and up. If you can’t afford to fully outsource your link building, you may want to hire Debra Mastler to train your in house staff.

Developing Authority & Being Easy to Link At

8. Make your content easy to understand so many people can understand and spread your message. (It’s an accessibility thing.)
9. Put some effort in to minimize grammatical or spelling errors, especially if you need authoritative people like librarians to link to your site.
10. Have an easily accessible privacy policy and about section so your site seems more trustworthy. Including a picture of yourself may also help build your authority.

PPC as a Link Building Tool

11. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign. Relevant traffic will get your site more visitors and brand exposure. When people come to your site, regardless of the channel in which they found it, there is a possibility that they will link to you.

News & Syndication

12. Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic. (Update: about a half-decade after publishing this article many of these article directories were penalized by the Google Panda algorithm & Google has grown to take a more dubious view of these sites as link sources – even though Google still syndicates their ads to these very same sites.)
13. Submit an article to industry news site. Have an SEO site? Write an article and submit to WebProNews. Have a site about BLANK? Submit to BLANKinformationalsite.com.
14. Syndicate a press release. Take the time to make it GOOD (compelling, newsworthy). Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message. For good measure, submit it to PRWeb, PRLeap, etc. While many press release sites now add nofollow to press releases, you can also compliment your press releases with media centers on your own site & have custom graphics, data and features on your site so that people who see the release may link directly at the associated pages on your site.
15. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.
16. Trade articles with other webmasters.
17. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.
18. Write about, and link to, companies with “in the news” pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments. This is obviously easiest if you have a news section or blog. Do a Google search for [your industry + “in the news”].
19. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important. If you can make other people feel important they will help do your marketing for you for free. Salary.com did a study on how underpaid mothers were, and they got many high quality links. Even if you do not have a “feel good” angle, you can still get mentions by leveraging data from your surveys as a hook for a story. When we surveyed searchers the survey was later mentioned by an important governmental body. Services like AYTM and Google Surveys are quite affordable.

Directories, Meme Trackers & Social Bookmarking

20. This tip is an oldie but goodie: submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.
21. Submit your site to paid directories. Another oldie. Just remember that quality matters.
22. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible. Of course, if you make it into a truly useful resource, it will attract links on its own.
23. Tag related sites on sites like Del.icio.us. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.
24. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you. If your site gets on the front page of Digg or on the Del.icio.us popular list, hundreds more bloggers will see your site, and potentially link to it.
25. Look at meme trackers to see what ideas are spreading. If you write about popular spreading ideas with plenty of original content (and link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source on the meme tracker site. Or if you track companies which are frequently covered on meme trackers you can send a tip to the TechMeme editors and get a thank you mention of your Twitter account.

Local & Business Links

26. Join the Better Business Bureau.
27. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.
28. Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources. (Easier in some countries than in others.)
29. List your site at the local library’s Web site.
30. See if your manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.
31. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online and off, by recommending each other via links and distributing each other’s business cards. As an example, we’ve worked with Wordtracker to promote a co-produced keyword strategies guide.
32. Launch an affiliate program. Most of the links you pick up will not have SEO value, but the added exposure will almost always lead to additional “normal” links from people asking about your site on social media and web forums.

Easy Free Links

33. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist to be a cheap or free classified service.
34. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Yahoo! Answers or Quora and provide links to relevant resources.
35. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.
36. If you run a fairly reputable company, create a page about it in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis. Getting added is only half the battle. Make sure you regularly monitor your page for zealot editors who may decide to arbitrarily delete it. If it is hard to list your site directly, try to add links to other pages that link to your site.
37. It takes about 15 minutes to set up a topical Squidoo page, which you can use to look like an industry expert. Link to expert documents and popular useful tools in your fields, and also create a link back to your site.
38. Submit a story to Digg that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page.
39. If you publish an RSS feed and your content is useful and regularly updated, some people will syndicate your RSS content (and some of those will provide links; unfortunately, some will not).
40. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and potentially read your site, link at your site, and/or buy your products. The key is to be relevant and have links seem more incidental or complimentary rather than having it look like you are posting just for the links.

Have a Big Heart for Reviews

41. Most smaller businesses are not well established online, so if your site has much authority, your review related content often ranks well.
42. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. We have seen this draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links.
43. Create product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your background (LINK!).
44. Review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.
45. Review products and services on shopping search engines like ePinions to help build your authority. Amazon looks at reviewers who are well liked by other Amazon customers & offers some of them the opportunity to get free products to review via their Vine program.
46. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links. Two testimonial writing tips — make them believable, and be specific where possible.

Blogs & the Blogosphere

47. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.
48. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.
49. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.
50. Technorati tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN (now Bing), and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.
51. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.

Design as a Linking Element

52. Web 2.0-ify your site. People love to link to anything with AJAX. Even in the narrowest of niches, there is some kind of useful functionality you can build with AJAX, then promote these features on design blogs.
53. Validate and 508 your site. This (indirect) method makes your site more trustworthy and linkable, especially from governmental sites or design-oriented communities. There are even a few authoritative directories of standards-compliant sites.
54. Order a beautiful CSS redesign. A nice design can get links from sites like CSS Vault.

Link Trading

55. Swap some links. What?! Did we really just recommend reciprocal link building? Yes, on a small scale, and with relevant partners that will send you traffic. Stay away from the link trading hubs and networks which are full of low quality sites & hide the links section in a back alley nobody (other than GoogleBot) sees.
56. In case you didn’t get the memo — when swapping links, try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages. Do not try to get links from pages that list hundreds of off topic link partners. Only seek link exchanges that you would consider pursuing even if search engines did not exist. Instead of thinking just about your topic when exchanging links, think about demographic audience sets.

Buying Sites, Renting Links & Advertisements

57. Rent some high quality links from a broker. Text Link Ads was the most reputable firm in this niche when we originally published this list, but Google has certainly cracked down on paid links over the years.
58. Rent some high quality links directly from Web sites. Sometimes the most powerful rented links come direct from sites not actively renting links. Don’t ask to buy links, ask to advertise.
59. Become a sponsor. All sorts of charities, contests, and conferences link to their sponsors. This can be a great way to gain visibility, links, and a warm feeling in your heart.
60. Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the profits to a charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.
61. Many search algorithms seem biased toward older established sites. It may be faster to buy an old site with a strong link profile, and link it to your own site, than to try to start building authority links from scratch.

Use the Courts (Proceed with Caution)

62. Sue Google.
63. Get sued by a company people hate. When Aaron was sued by Traffic Power, he got hundreds or thousands of links, including links from sites like Wired and The Wall Street Journal.

Freebies & Giveaways

64. Hold a contest. Contests make great link bait. A few-hundred-dollar prize can result in thousands of dollars worth of editorial quality links. Enough said.
65. Build a tool collection. Original and useful tools (and collections of tools) get a lot of link love. What do you think rankings for terms like football betting odds, keyword tool or mortgage estimator are worth?
66. Create and release open source site design templates for content management systems like WordPress. Don’t forget the “Designed by example.com” bit in the footer! To mitigate some risks one can point links at a page other than the home page.
67. Offer free samples in exchange for feedback.
68. Release a Firefox extension. Make sure you have a download and/or support page on your site which people can link to.

Conferences & Social Interaction

69. It is easy to take pictures of important events and tell narratives about why they are important. Pictures of (drunk?) “celebrities” in your industry make great link bait.
70. Leverage new real world relationships into linking relationships. If you go to SEO related conferences, people like Tim Mayer, Matt Cutts, and Danny Sullivan are readily accessible. Similarly, in other industries, people who would normally seem inaccessible are exceptionally accessible at trade conferences. It is much easier to seem “real” in person. Once you create social relationships in person, it is easy to extend that onto the web.
71. Engaging, useful, and interesting interviews are an easy way to create original content. And they spread like wildfire.

30 Bad Ways to Build Links

Here are a few link buiding methods that may destroy your brand or get your site banned/penalized/filtered from major search engines, or both.

Directories

72. Submit your site to 200 cheesy paid directories (averaging $15 a pop) that send zero traffic and sell offtopic run-of-site links.

Forum Spam

73. List 100 Web sites in your signature file.
74. Exclusively post only when you can add links to your sites in the post area.
75. Post nothing but “me too” posts to build your post count. Use in combination with a link-rich signature file.
76. Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.
77. As a new member to various forums, ask the same question at 20 different forums on the same day.
78. Post on forum threads that are years outdated exclusively to link to your semi-related website.
79. Sign up for profiles on forums you never intend on commenting on.

Blog Spam

80. Instead of signing blog comments with your real name, sign them with spammy keywords.
81. Start marketing your own site hard on your first blog comment. Add no value to the comment section. Mention nothing other than you recently posted on the same subject at _____ and everyone should read it. Carpet bomb dozens of blogs with this message.
82. Say nothing unique or relevant to the post at hand. Make them assume an automated bot hit their comments.
83. Better yet, use automated bots to hit their comments. List at least 30 links in each post. Try to see if you can hit any servers hard enough to make them crash.
84. Send pings to everyone talking about a subject. In your aggregation post, state nothing of interest. Only state that other people are talking about the topic.
85. Don’t even link to any of the sites you are pinging. Send them pings from posts that do not even reference them.

Garbage Link Exchanges

86. Send out link exchange requests mentioning PageRank.
87. Send link exchange emails which look like an automated bot sent them (little or no customization, no personal names, etc.).
88. Send link exchange requests to Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer, Tim Converse, Google, and Yahoo!.
89. Get links from nearly-hidden sections of websites listing hundreds or thousands of off topic sites.

Spam People in Person

90. Go to webmaster conferences and rave about how rich you are, and how your affiliates make millions doing nothing.
91. Instead of asking people what their name is, ask what their URL is. As soon as you get their URL ask if they have linked to your site yet and if not, why not.

Be Persistant

92. Send a webmaster an alert to every post you make on your website.
93. Send a webmaster an email every single day asking for them to link to your website.
94. Send references to your site to the same webmaster from dozens of different email accounts (you sly dog).
95. If the above do not work to get you a free link, offer them $1 for their time. Increase your offer by a dollar each day until they give in.

Getting Links by Being a Jerk

96. Emulate the RIAA. When in doubt, file a lawsuit against a 12-year-old girl. (Failing that, obtain bad press by any means necessary.)
97. Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you.
98. Send thousands of fake referrals at every top ranking Web site, guaranteeing larger boobs, a 14-inch penis (is that length or girth?), or millions of dollars in free, unclaimed money.
99. Wear your URL on your t-shirt. Walk or drive your car while talking on a cell phone or reading a book. When you run into other people say “excuse you, jerk”.
100. Spill coffee on people or find creative ways to insult people to coax them into linking at your site.
101. Sue other webmasters for deep linking to your site. Well, this is more “hilariously dumb” than it is a “bad linking practice”.

Calls to Action

Did you really make it to the end of the list? Thanks for staying with us! And now for our shameless plugs:
Did you enjoy this article? Give us some link love, and don’t forget to bookmark this page on Delicious.
Want to learn more about link building? Read more SEO Book link building articles, and new posts on the SEO Book blog.

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131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies

There’s no debate links are a big signal of quality to search engines, so you need to know your ABCs.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to further enhance your link profile, links remain a critical method of marketing. However, if you’ve been paying attention, you can see that link building is a constantly evolving practice.
Certain tactics are overused then abused then penalized, with link builders running around trying to undo damage from techniques that worked well but maybe weren’t 100 percent safe ideas.

What follows is a list and discussion of 131 (legitimate) link building tactics, some of which worked just as well 10 years ago as they do today.

Start With the Basics

Ah, the basics…these are the tactics that can form the foundations of any link building campaign, no matter what your niche or budget. The basics don’t tend to change and they’re critical to understand so that you can move on to more advanced and creative techniques.
1. Email a webmaster, asking for a link to your site. Personalizing your emails is critical here (think about how many emails you get every day) so make sure you’re actually emailing webmasters who have sites that are relevant to yours, and, even more importantly, make sure that your site is actually link-worthy. We’re all busy people and no one wants to waste time so if it’s not a good place for a link to you, don’t waste anyone’s time.
2. Use the phone. Picking up the phone to do the same thing as listed above is also acceptable for those of us who aren’t averse to having to speak to another human being for work matters.
3. Find great sources for links by simply searching the web for your desired target keywords. Whereas even a year ago I would have said that sites appearing high in the SERPs would be good sites to contact, due to the truly amazing amount of spam and hacked sites that appear high up for certain search terms, I’d say you need to visit the sites with a very careful eye. Whereas we used to think that getting a link from any source was a good idea, after Google started notifying webmasters that they had bad links which should be removed, I’d say to be very, very critical.
4. Use social media to find great sources for links. There are loads of tools that can help with this (my favorite is Icerocket) but simply going to Twitter and searching for a keyword in the same way that you search through an engine’s results can show you some fantastic link opportunities.
5. Make the link negotiation personal. Even if you’ve emailed to ask for a link, don’t be opposed to speaking to this benevolent webmaster by phone, or in person if that works out. Sometimes this personal connection can be what secures your link.
6. Know what makes a site a good linking partner. If you’ve been building links for a long time, you can probably easily glance at a site and, in under a minute, determine whether it would be a beneficial linking partner. However, for the rest of the world, it’s not so easy. Know what makes me like a site more than anything else? Social love. If I see a blog post that is relevant to my topic, has ongoing relevant comments, a decent amount of tweets/likes/shares, that’s a good site to me because I’m thinking about traffic.
7. Think about traffic! Think about sites that can send you relevant traffic, not just sites that might improve your rankings. If you can see yourself going to that site, seeing your link, clicking on it, and thinking “nice, this is just what I wanted!” then yes, that’s a good traffic-generating site most likely.
8. Stop thinking about rankings and Google’s Toolbar PageRank. Rankings definitely matter but considering the amount of places that can send you traffic (like social media sites, sites that link to you, sites where you guest post, etc.) it’s silly to rely on rankings in one engine. Stop thinking that a link from a site with a PR of 0 won’t help you, and that a link from a site with a PR of 5 definitely will.
9. Check to see what your competitors are doing. While this should never be a definitive way to define your own link plan, it’s valuable to see what works for others in your niche. Just don’t think that you can mimic a competitor’s link profile and do as well as they have. It’s definitely not that simple.
10. Make sure your site isn’t hurting you. Many times we think that with the right links, our sites will soar in the rankings, even though they are usability nightmares with nothing real to offer anyone that can’t be found elsewhere.
11. Check out the sites that link to you and find the sites they link to. Sounds convoluted, but it’s a great way to figure out other good sites to contact.
12. If you get a link from a fantastic site that is exactly the type of site you want to link to you, after congratulating yourself on this achievement, do some digging and find out who else links to that site. Those may also be good sites to contact for links.
13. Search for sites that should link to you but don’t. If you find a blog post entitled “Top 100 companies that sell green widgets” and you sell green widgets but aren’t listed, contact the webmaster and point this out. Nicely, of course.
14. Don’t automate if you can help it. There are times when automation can be a lifesaver but when it comes to reviewing a site and making a personal connection that leads to a link, I’d make the decision to do it all manually.
15. If you receive a negative response, regard this as very important, as these refusals could be telling you something. Perhaps your site isn’t as link-worthy as you thought it was. If a webmaster takes the time to email you back and say no thanks, ask him or her why. Maybe you’ll uncover an error that is glaring to everyone but yourself. Regard this as a fantastic usability opportunity. Also, if a webmaster points out something fixable and you fix it, maybe you’ll get that link in the end.
16. If you move your site to a new URL, surely you’ll 301 it but for the maximum linky benefit, do yourself a favor and contact the sites (especially the really good ones) that link to you to point out your new URL.
17. Sponsor something. Sponsor a charity, a contest, an afterschool club at your kid’s school, anything.
18. Learn to love the nofollowed link. There’s more to life than link juice. Nofollows can be amazing for traffic so if someone says yes, I’ll link to you but I have to nofollow it, say thanks.
19. See who links to YouTube videos that relate to your industry and ask them for a link.
20. In that same line of thought, see who links to infographics in your niche. Ask them for a link.

 

 

Become a Content Provider

If you aren’t putting content out there for consumption, you stand little chance of acquiring links. People use the web to gather information, and if you aren’t giving it to them, someone else (your competitor) definitely is.
I know that many people who are fantastic communicators and great thinkers often don’t believe that they can write anything of value. However, as we’ll point out to start off, practice is the key here.
21. Write something even if you’re not yet very good at it. The more you practice, the better you’ll be.
22. Write something really, really good, something that no one else has yet written. Put a new spin on what you want to say so that it will grab people’s attention. For example, if you’re writing about pest control (and for the record I do not work with any pest control clients), then maybe write a piece about how you’re never more than a few feet away from a spider. Shivers.
22. Think about an ongoing content plan and write so that it’s easy to write a follow-up piece. Series are great, regular guest post slots are great, and knowing what your “thing” is can definitely be great. For example, for my agency’s blog, we’ve decided that we want to show how we think about links. We have a group of employees who are from extremely diverse backgrounds and we’ve had a lot of success with blog posts that do more than tell you how to contact a webmaster and get a link. Our “thing” is creative thinking about what we do for a living.
23. Produce something other than just textual content. Do an infographic or create a comic. Produce videos where you do things like interview people in your industry (hey, look how far it took Jonathan Allen!) Start a weekly online radio show. That kind of non-text-based content does get links.
24. Actively pursue new opportunities for contributing to your industry. Maybe you can moderate a forum or help curate a weekly newsletter. Maybe you can provide fantastic answers on Quora.
25. Find something that’s missing and jump into giving it to us. No forum for your industry? Start one. Looking for a list of all the preschools in your town but can’t find one? Do the research, write it, and put it out there for everyone to see and link to.
26. Do one major article that will become the definitive resource for something and that can be (and will be) updated on a semi-annual or annual basis. Think Rae Hoffman-Dolan’s amazing series “Link Building With The Experts.”
27. Create a curated list for something. Think about your industry and what you have trouble keeping up with.
28. Produce a monthly “best of” series to recap what’s happened in your industry in case people missed something.
29. Reference your older articles when they’re relevant. Michael Gray does a great job of this with his archived posts tweets.
30. Make sure that when you do promote your content, the right people are seeing it at the right time. If you’re publishing an article about the best pizza delivery in New York, don’t publish it when everyone on the East Coast is sound asleep. There are great scheduling tools out there, so use them if you can’t promote content at the right time.

Leave Your Links Everywhere

Well, not everywhere maybe, but links can be a calling card if used wisely. Some of these cross over with the above section on providing content. This is the same idea as any other marketing really; you want as many eyeballs as possible on your product.
31. Link to your site in your email signature.
32. Link to your site in all your social media platforms.
33. Link to your site on your business cards that you will naturally give out at industry events.
34. Tell people about your site. You’d be surprised at how much of a resource this can be.
35. Comment on relevant blogs and sites without doing so in a spammy manner. I wouldn’t suggest popping your link into a casual comment because that’s not a good way to build long-term link exposure, but using your site for your comment signature can lead people to you, even if it doesn’t actually generate a link on the spot.
36. As mentioned earlier, guest post. Ask to guest post. Approach sites and say hey, would you be interested in having me as a one-time contributor? Be prepared with something though, in case you’re asked for an idea or a writing sample.
37. Interview someone. Interviewees usually link back to these interviews, and they’re a great way to get to know people in your industry.
38. Write a testimonial or a review of a product.
39. Leave reviews for local businesses you’ve visited on sites like Yelp.
40. Give feedback online through social media. If you like an article, tweet that to the writer. If you had a great hotel stay, put it on their Facebook page.

Be Creative and Visible

There’s so much information out there that if you aren’t presenting a unique experience, you’re going to fall behind. If you aren’t drawing attention to your work, people aren’t going to see it.
Some people have difficulty promoting their own work, while some people seem to do nothing but promote their own work. You should definitely let people know when you have something new as we’re all busy people and will appreciate it.
41. Rewrite an old post in order to update the ideas.
42. Write a rebuttal or an alternative point of view to a post, publish it on your site, and let the webmaster know.
43. Do the same but ask to have it published on the same site.
44. Although I am very guilty of not going this well, include images in what you write. Sometimes your image will stick in someone’s mind longer than your words will.
45. Speak up on social media. Do it on Twitter, on Facebook, on Google+, and anywhere else there’s a conversation.
46. Participate in forums. Ask and answer questions. You can make amazing contacts this way.
47. If you can, sponsor a meetup in your area or maybe do a small drinks round at a bar after a conference.
48. Crowdsource ideas and feedback when you need them. I’ve met very few people who don’t enjoy being asked their opinion.
49. Introduce yourself to people online and offline. I’m always happy when someone comes up to me at a conference and introduces him or herself. Lots of friendships and business relationships are formed from a simple bold “hi.”
50. Speak at a conference! This is one of the ultimate ways to get noticed, and you can get a great link off the website of the people putting on the show. Your name will be in the conference materials, too…always a good thing.

 

 

 

Especially For B2B Sites

B2B can be tough at times. However, some of those difficulties simply come from how we think about it. I’m guilty of thinking that B2B provides more challenges than other types of businesses but if asked, I can’t actually give any concrete reasons to back it up.
Let’s just think of B2B as being unique, not difficult.
51. If you have a relationship with a supplier, don’t be afraid to link out and get a link back. While reciprocal links can be excessively spammy, if it makes sense, it isn’t always bad.
52. Simply ask your partners to link to you.
53. Publish an email newsletter that showcases anything new or creative that you’re doing and let your partners know about it. Maybe if you’ve never gotten a link off their website, you will once they see that you’re offering something new that can’t be found elsewhere.
54. Showcase a partner each month on your company’s blog or in a newsletter and ask the partner to promote this through his or her own company. You can get a great link off thatblog for your trouble, and links like this are nicely relevant.
55. Create a contest for the guys who buy from you. For example, ask the 10 big ones to write a blog post on their company blogs about a topic relevant to both of you in your industry, with a link back to your site. For their trouble, enter them into a drawing where one lucky winner gets a discount on the next month’s agreement.
56. Put together a downloadable guide to your services and include the companies that you work with and list what they have to offer, to be used as an industry resource. Let them all know about it and don’t be afraid to promote this through social media channels, as everyone likes to know where they can find good information.
57. Think data. What kind of data would help you do something better, whether it’s find new suppliers/providers, cut costs, recruit employees, etc.? Search for it and if it exists and you aren’t a part of it, ask to contribute for the privilege of a link to your site. If this data isn’t out there, create it.
58. Participate where your suppliers, partners, and providers participate online. If there’s a big forum and you’ve never taken the time to get involved, do so now. If there isn’t anything major out there but you think there’s a need, get together with some of these companies and make it happen.
59. Sponsor a meetup or dinner where you invite your closest business associates. A small bar tab goes a long, long way in terms of engendering loyalty. More important than actual links, loyalty is what can keep your business running.
60. Try and be seen as a leader in your niche for online marketing. If you’re in a traditionally old-school company where no one wants to go online, be the first. When you learn how to successfully do it, take the lead and cultivate a following of people who want to learn from you. You know that guy who’s been running a mom and pop tractor repair place that he took over from his dad 40 years ago? Help him get comfortable with the web.
61. Make sure you’re listed in all the relevant online business directories.
62. Make sure you’re listed in all the local services like Yahoo Local and Google Places.
63. Become a member of your local civic organizations, Chamber of Commerce, marketing groups, etc.
64. Make a donation to a group in town that is somehow connected with your B2B. If you manufacture dog crates that you usually sell to dog breeders, make a donation to the animal shelter or ASPCA.
65. Check out the printed media available in your area. These can be great places to advertise and the cost can be low, but the visibility is excellent.
66. Ask for a link whenever you send out a new contract. While this should never be a requirement, it doesn’t hurt to mention that you’d like a link if possible, and make it easy by including instructions.
67. If you don’t have a blog, start one. Even the most seemingly-boring niches can be fascinating for the people who are involved with them.
68. Make sure you’re using social media at least on a minor level, even if it’s just having a Facebook page. Be the pioneer in your industry if you need to be and get comfortable with a form of marketing that is most likely going be around (and increasing in importance) for a long time.
69. Offer social media contests for a gift card. For example, if you “like” your business on Facebook, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a $100 gift card to Amazon, Home Depot, etc.
70.Speak at tradeshows and industry conferences. Maybe you’ll pick up another business partner this way.

Whom Should You Target?

Sometimes the discovery is the toughest part of link building, and it can be difficult to figure out where your best contacts will be. If you wanted to promote a local Chinese food delivery place that had a delivery radius of 5 miles, you wouldn’t be dropping menus at a neighborhood 20 miles away would you?
Let’s talk about how to target the most relevant prospects.
71. Sites that turn up in a simple manual keyword search. Now, to be honest, there have been a lot of issues with relevancy recently so I would never rely on the accuracy of what any engine tells me are the top 10 relevant sites for my query, but still, sites that show up for your keywords “should” be decent prospects, provided you’ve vetted them a bit and determined that they’re actually relevant.
72. Blogrolls. I would never rely on blogrolls and they have been abused but still, you can find some great sites through following blogrolls.
73. People that you already have some sort of existing relationship with, just no links from (yet).
74. Bloggers who are influential in your niche.
75. Sites who are open to guest posting and are in your niche.
76. Sites who are open to guest posting and not in your niche…as long as you can find a way to connect what you do to what they typically write about.
77. Webmasters you’ve spoken with in forums.
78. People you’ve met virtually.
79. Sites that could benefit from learning about your services.
80. Sites that you regularly use as an authority and that you’d like to contribute to.
Guest posting is kind of the current darling of the industry right now even though I imagine we’ll see it become abused like many other tactics. However, it presents a unique benefit: you showcase your work elsewhere. Sure you can write great content on your own blog, but when you can write great content for someone else, you get a link and you get known for contributing to something outside of what you control.
81. Use My Blog Guest to find people who are happy to post your content.
82. If there’s a site you read regularly, ask if they’d let you write something for them.
83. Pitch a series and not just a single post, as sometimes this offer gets attention faster.
84. Check social media to see who’s asking for guest posts.
85. If you write a guest post and it doesn’t go up immediately, don’t freak out and hassle the webmaster. Speaking from experience, I can say that sometimes getting a post up on my blog is not my highest priority of the day.
86. Use the guest post bio for a link.
87. Vary your guest post bio. Don’t do it to be spammy of course, but it’s a good way to get different bits of information out there about you and what you do.
88. Don’t be afraid to link to someone else in your guest post. If you’re referencing a competitor, link to him or her. It’s not going to kill you.
89. If you guest post on someone’s blog and are asked if the person can guest on yours, be gracious and say yes.
90. Don’t pay for guest posts. I am begging you. Keep them clean.

Keep Track Of What You’re Doing

Sometimes it’s easy to do so much that you forget what you have done, and you can duplicate your efforts. It’s easy enough to track but we don’t always think to do it. Doing so can save you a lot of time and effort though.
91. if someone says no to your request for a link/mention/guest post, etc. just move on. Don’t beat a dead horse or make it worse by harassing the person about it. Don’t email the same webmaster, who has said no repeatedly, 10 more times or you’re just begging for a reputation nightmare.
92. Watch your links and just generally keep an eye on things. Considering the amount of people who actually have been harmed by bad links, it’s worth making this a daily part of your marketing efforts.
93. Keep records of people who have been responsive but might not be able to help you out right now, and set a calendar reminder to contact them in a few months.
94. Keep a spreadsheet that lists the sites you’ve guest posted on or added your site to as a resource, etc. While it’s easy enough to pull a list of your links from the wide variety of tools out there, it’s also very easy to just keep track yourself.
95. Don’t submit the same piece of content to multiple sites.
96. Make sure that you aren’t speaking out of both sides of your mouth. For example if you’re an SEO, don’t write a post about how stupid it is to do link cleanup then turn around and write a post about how to do link cleanup. You’ll just get branded a hypocrite.
97. If you’re writing something new and you can’t remember if you’ve said it before, or if someone else has just said it, go look around and see. Even though you may mean no harm, many people have gotten upset over content that they view as being stolen or simply rehashed.

98. If you’re tried to reach out and connect with someone on social media but you’re not getting a response, just let it go and move on to someone else. No one likes a stalker, especially a persistent one.
99. If you’ve agreed to do a guest post series on someone’s blog, don’t make the webmaster track you down when the next installment is due, or you may find yourself out of a slot. Setting calendar reminders and sticking to deadlines when other people are concerned is simply good manners.
100. If you’re just read about something like an entire network being deindexed, pay attention and don’t waste your time and effort submitting content to those sites or trying to email them for links.

Link Checking Services and Information

There are free tools that let you check on links and there are paid tools. I use a mixture of both. Let’s just list a few that I can personally vouch for through either using them myself or through being lucky enough to have been asked to test them, and go through ways these can help you.

• Majestic SEO
• Link Research Tools
• Raven SEO Tools
• Linkdex
• Hitreach
• Ahrefs
• Buzzstream
• Screaming Frog
• SEOmoz
• Wordtracker

101. Check your new incoming links.
102. Check your overall backlink portfolio.
103. Conduct analysis on your own links.
104. Conduct analysis on a competitor’s profile.
105. Be alerted when a new link appears.
106. Check your breakdown of anchor text.
107. If there’s a drop in rankings or traffic, do a quick scan to see if anything looks fishy.
108. Check your portfolio after a major algorithm update.
109. Keep track of your existing links for various purposes.
110. Check out a site you want to get a link from before pursuing the opportunity.

Things to Avoid

What you should not do can sometimes be just as important as what you should do, so let’s talk about some things to avoid if you want to enjoy a sustainable link building campaign.
111. Spammy links. Should go without saying right? It doesn’t, unfortunately.
112. Footers and sitewides on totally irrelevant sites. I’ve seen some relevant footers and sitewides but by and large, they are very, very rare.
113. Links that won’t bring you any traffic whatsoever.
114. Links on sites that seem to exist only to sell links or publish scraped content.
115. Links on sites that are part of a very obvious (and spammy) network.
116. Guest posts on poor quality sites that, again, don’t have a prayer of giving you any good traffic or visibility.
117. Repeating the same exact keywordized anchor over and over and over again, on every site that you deal with for 6 months.
118. Not using brand and URL anchors.
119. Not using some form of analytics, and not using Google’s Webmaster Tools. If you rely on Google like most people, using the Webmaster Tools can save you a lot of time if anything weird/bad happens. It’s hard to understand what’s happening in the engines and with rankings/traffic if you aren’t set up to be able to see what’s going on.
120. Thinking that you won’t actually get penalized or deindexed for using link practices that violate an engine’s guidelines for inclusion. Familiarize yourself with what can and will get you into trouble and if you can seriously afford the risk, make your decision. If being penalized in some way will cripple your business, you don’t need to do something that will potentially harm you.

Extra Tips and Notes

121. Be nice please, no matter what. If you are asking for a link, be respectful. If someone says no, say thank you and move on.
122. Don’t get into a shouting match online just because someone disagrees with you. By that same token, don’t be a jerk and make rude comments to people just because you don’t agree with them. It really is possible to disagree without devolving.
123. Say thanks when someone does something nice for you, whether it’s mentioning you for a Twitter “Follow Friday”, praising your latest article, or sending business your way. These are great ways to get links down the road.
124. Test a variety of tools to see which ones work best for you. There are indeed fantastic free ones, but some of the paid ones offer amazing functionality that may save you lots of time and money.
125. If you see that someone who previously sent you lots of traffic through a link has just removed that link, email or call and ask why, and figure out what you can do to get the link back. If it’s a good link, it’s worth the effort.
126. Don’t be afraid to link out. Thinking that you need to “conserve” link juice is just the slightest bit stingy. If there’s a great resource but it belongs to your competitor’s site, it says a lot that you can take the ego hit and link out anyway.
127. Don’t set limits on who you’ll deal with. If someone with 200 followers on Twitter asks you to do an interview, don’t dismiss the person because everyone else you do interviews for has at least a 5,000 Twitter follower reach.
128. Don’t put yourself in a box. Maybe you’ve never done an infographic and you think they won’t work for you, but guess what? You’ll never know until you try.
129. Incorporate image links into your backlink profile. If a site owner won’t give you a text link ask if he’ll take an image link.
130. Watch what other people in your niche are doing. You don’t always have to do the same thing but you can definitely learn from what they’re doing, even if you learn that their latest marketing tactic isn’t something you ever want to do.
131. Don’t ever get comfortable and think that you know everything. You don’t. Even if you almost do right now, you won’t next week. Keep reading about what’s going on in the SEO industry, in link building, and in your niche. Look at all the opportunities you have to learn something new and take them.