Its no secret that backlinks (links pointing to your domain) are very important factor on how google ranks your website in their search results. Most other search engines also value the links to your site also …
Here is some free techniques you can employ to help you build links to your site, traffic will be a consequence as well. You don’t have to follow them in any particular order but, the more of these that you accomplish the better job you will have done …
- Write or post something people would want to link to (actually called link baiting).
- Create a resource, something that people would find valuable and will easily point their friends to
Example: directorycritic is one of the best places to find free and paid directories; people know that and recommended it boldly, sometimes they even link to it. - Exchange links with like minded blogs or sites, relevant exchanges are usually better but for luck of relevant sites any exchange is good enough, you can look in forums for people that are willing to exchange links; usually there is a dedicated section for that.
- Submit your site to free directories, can use the excellent allsumitter directory submitter to help you with that. If you need lists of free directories to insert in your favorite submitter, you can find great lists at directorycritic.com, onewaytextlinks.com (many more lists exist on the internet, it could take me a whole post just to list them here).
- You can write articles and get them posted on article directories (process similar to directory submissions) and usually you can include a few links on the buttom of each article pointing to your relevant sites. Can find article directories in directorycritic website.
- Post on squidoo.com, create any number of lenses advertising one or all your websites, its very fast and its free try it.
- Post/vote a few of your great articles/posts/pages to the social bookmarking networks, if they are worth something other people will also vote for them and in the process you will get some extra links, can also ask your friends to check them out and vote for them (Digg, delicious, Stumbleupon, Sphinn, Propeller are some of the networks I usually post).
- Include your link in your forum signature, look in the list of directories that allow signature links (+other links) where you can start hanging out and enjoy signature link love.
- If you blog or site has some sort of RSS feed functionality, submit it to RSS feed directories, you should also make available for aggregators that would like to include your content with linkback to the original posts. Here is a list you can start with.
- Participate in blog discussions: most blogs lately allow you to include a link to your blog when you post a comment, some also will add your link sitewide if you are one of the top posters (like in this very blog), find a blog that you like and post a few comments on the articles that you find interesting … be careful if your comments are irrelevant or disrespectful or full of links they might be considered spammy and will get erased.
I am probably forgetting some right now but if you read this far you have probably found one that you have not done yet …
Please share your favorite link building technique, its OK to link to your website if its offering a free link …
23 responses so far ↓
1 Adam Za7 // Oct 26, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Thanks for the tips and links to sites. I will be sure to take advantage of it.
Adam
2 fundraising ideas // Oct 26, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Dofollow social bookmarking sites and pligg sites are the best.
3 YELLOW PAGES // Oct 27, 2007 at 12:03 am
Great post! However, I do not think that directory submission is useful any more? Google hit them recently
Do you agree with me regarding the directories? Please share your opinion, so in case they are important, I need to do 1k submission.
Thanks
4 Web Designer // Oct 27, 2007 at 6:33 am
I agree–great post. I also noticed that many small (seo-friendly) directories are being hit with a PR drop recently. Its apparent their value is becoming less and less over time.
5 Ashley // Oct 27, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Yellow Pages, Directory submissions are (and pretty much always have been) useless for building Pagerank (unless you paid to submit to the now largely penalised high PR directories.)
There are however very useful for building a background of links to a site. Getting submissions might be over doing it a tad though!
6 GiorgosK // Oct 27, 2007 at 12:46 pm
web designer, maybe that is so I did not actually notice any PR drops for the small guys …
Ashley I never advised Directory submissions for building pagerank … properly texted links have always helped the search engine understand what my sites are about though
7 Ed Kohler // Nov 4, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Great tips. Linking strategies based on creating quality content are going to be the most rewarding in the long run. For example, creating articles that people are willing to link to is more valuable than exchanging links.
8 GiorgosK // Nov 4, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Yes that is true Kohler that is why I put those two at the top of the list (great content, great resource)
9 Minyak Lintah // Nov 9, 2007 at 9:00 pm
How does squido works? Is there any guide or tutorial? And i also dont understand social bookmarking.
10 Jayson // Nov 11, 2007 at 2:15 am
Thanks for the techniques. Do you know if submitting to several article directories devalues the links? I’ve read that it does and would love to save the time if it does devalue the links.
Also, some article directories let you post 3 links - do you get 3 links in this case (I don’t see why you wouldn’t)?
11 saura // Nov 24, 2007 at 8:34 am
This was a good article but nothing special about link building was discussed. I mean everything written is known almost to every blogger. The problem comes when you start executing these steps, thats where most of people are unsuccessful.
12 GiorgosK // Nov 24, 2007 at 10:47 am
Not all websites are blogs and not all website owners are bloggers … and I don’t even think all bloggers know these techniques, the newbies certainly don’t !!!
So, what parts were you unsuccessful in ?
Maybe we can focus on those instead of talking about generalities!!
13 admin // Jan 3, 2008 at 2:23 am
I think it is great when people let you put a link on their site. It has to be creating traffic for sure..And we would never knock back traffic, would we.
14 CellPhoneSignal // Jan 16, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I think these are all great tips but I’m not convinced they are the end all.
15 GiorgosK // Jan 16, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I never made the claim that they are the end all,
just some suggestions for people starting with their link building.
16 anil // Feb 22, 2008 at 9:45 am
link building is a time consuming and continuous process that every site or blog have to go through
17 MFC // Mar 4, 2008 at 7:58 am
Well I found some of this useful
18 tudomo // Mar 5, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I think directories are still worthwhile. Especially the bigger ones that Google still takes notice of.
19 barbara // Mar 16, 2008 at 6:15 am
I wonder if directory submissions are still effective. Some SEO experts say it’s not but I had some clients that did it and saw some results.
Some people are actually calling it a not so ethical technique.
But anyway GiorgiosK, thank you for the tips!
20 barbara // Apr 25, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Hi barbara -
Directory submission is still effective. The important thing in directory submission is changing anchor text. I get good result with one way links only.
21 atmmultimedia // Apr 30, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Great tips thanks for the advice
22 Brock Ventura // May 9, 2008 at 4:06 am
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23 peterson2020 // May 14, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Thanks for the Tips
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