There are two sides of a coin when considering how to market your site on the internet. Firstly, concentrate on the site itself: write regularly updated quality content and optimize the site for search engines. Secondly, by concentrating off the site: getting quality sites to link to yours.
Introduction
As I’ve said before in this series, there is no way to cheat the system. Employ these link building methods in an honest and respectful way. There is no quick and easy solution to link building and SEO. It takes time to do and time to see the results.
Why get links? Simply, more links = more traffic.
But also, Google (and other search engines) counts a link as a “vote” for your site. The more votes for your site, the higher your site will feature in their search results. But it is important what sort of page is linking to your site.
Aim for links from reputable sources within your industry or niche, as these carry more weight in the eyes of search engines. Collaborating with the best link building agency can help you identify and secure valuable backlinks that drive organic traffic and enhance your site’s authority.
Furthermore, diversity in your link profile is key to a robust SEO strategy. Diversified links from a variety of sources signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy and valuable to users. Seek opportunities for natural link acquisition through creating high-quality content, engaging with influencers, and participating in relevant online communities. By prioritizing ethical and strategic link building practices, you’ll not only improve your search engine visibility but also establish lasting credibility and trustworthiness in your industry.
Here is what Google says about links:
Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google combines PageRank (our view of a page’s importance) with sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google counts the number of votes a page receives as part of its PageRank assessment, interpreting a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”
Download the Google toolbar for Firefox and it will show you the PageRank of every page in the internet. If you get links to your site from pages that have a PR of 7 or more you’re laughing!
But the relevance of the inbound link is also important. Get links from sites that are in a similar area of business to yours.
Here’s a great little trick of doing this. Find a site of a company or individual who does what you do but is more established, has a higher PageRank – basically find a website that you want to emulate. Check out the links to their site. Google “links:www.their-site.com” and you will see who links to them. Try to get these sites to link to you!
Here are some tried and tested ways of getting good relevant inbound links to your site. (Apart from having quality content!!!)
Write articles for other sites and guest posting
Write original material for other websites, blogs, articles site and industry news sites that are relevant to your field. Of course, sometimes you will write an article for someone else and then think to yourself “oh that’s quite good, I should use that on my own site!” But, be generous with your content and write as good an article as you can for other quality sites in your niche.
Here are some general articles sites but you should also look for articles sites and blogs that deal with your area of expertise.
Write a press release about developments in your business or site. Take the time to make it a compelling and newsworthy release. Submit it to PRWeb or PRLeap.
Your article or press release will sit on these sites for months and years to come with a link back to your site.
Comment on other blogs
If you read a good article on a blog, why not spend a few minutes writing to say what you liked about the post and see if you can add anything to the discussion? People may follow the link from the comment to your site.
These comment links back to your site may not provide you with any link juice.
The thorny nofollow/dofollow issue and an explanation of “Link Juice”
Link Juice is the name given to the PageRank (and other things) passed from one page to another via a link. Because a lot of blogs, forums, social bookmarking sites and even some directories are “nofollow” you will not get any link juice from links from these sites.
What is a “nofollow” link?
rel="nofollow"is a piece of HTML that is used to instruct search engines that the link should not influence the target’s ranking. In other words, a nofollow link sends traffic but not PageRank.Some webmasters and blog owners actually want to reward commenters with a bit of link juice and remove the rel=”nofollow” tag. So if you comment on these blogs your PageRank and, ultimately, your place in the search engine rankings will improve. Lists of “dofollow” or “nonofollow” blogs do exist but I would exercise caution here.
Commenting on these blogs with a few words such as “nice post, dude” and entering your keywords instead of your name will not help you. Comments such as these will be deleted immediately (they may not even make it on to the page) and will serve only to make you unpopular with the very people you need to get on with. As always with SEO, act honestly.
I used to be a “dofollow” blog but I stopped because of too much comment spam.
Social bookmarking sites
People submit links of content they like on the web to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Technorati (more of a blog search engine) and, new-ish kid on the block, Twitter.
You can create a page of your own favorite links and include a few back to your site. If your links are considered a good resource by others they will follow them, including the ones to your site, and you may get more links from them.
Social bookmarking is a great way to promote your site, network with other people in your area of expertise and find new ideas and information to help you develop your site. But don’t over-submit your own content or you will be penalized. As always with SEO adopt the “white hat” approach. If you’re offering something valuable you will reap rewards. If you don’t, you won’t!
Link to other sites
Link to sites as you would like sites to link to you.
If you find some valuable information or resource related to your field then link to it from your site. But do this in the correct way. Write good anchor text for the link. The anchor text or link label is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text is weighted highly by search engines. So when you are linking to some other page say what it is (and maybe something nice!).
So do this:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a>
or this:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia, is amazing multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia </a>
but not this:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Click here</a> for Wikipedia
The webmaster or blog owner will see this lovely inbound link with good anchor text and may return the favor one day.
Also certain blogs will automatically publish a trackback to your site when you link to it. These trackbacks can produce traffic and, in a minority of cases, link juice – but, again, don’t abuse!
Submit to directories
It’s tedious and depressing and should only be done for 10-15 minutes at a time with some musical accompaniment but here’s a list of 50 free directories with good Google PageRank with no reciprocal link needed.
Reciprocal links and three way link exchanges
Reciprocal links are the “I’ll scratch your back” method of SEO. You link to them if they link to you. The benefit of doing this is considered to be extremely limited.
What may be slightly better is a three way link exchange where site A links to site B and site C links to site A. This creates the illusion of a one way link in the eyes of the search engines. When partaking in this form of linking I would be cautious of link building companies. Regularly check to see if their link to you stays there as many will delete these links a few weeks after they are set up. And try keep them relevant to your site’s subject matter. Here is my links page if you want to do a three way link exchange get in touch.
Conclusion
Question: So, what’s the best method of ensuring good in-bound links from sites of high Google PageRank?
Answer: content. If you haven’t got anything anybody wants, not many people will link to you. But you knew that, didn’t you.
Another interesting point is that the two reasons for linking – traffic and link juice – usually go hand in hand: my best links in terms of PageRank are actually the best links in terms of traffic.
Go about the above techniques with respect for other sites and for the subject matter – keep it real and honest. And, in my opinion, limit these link building activities to less than an hour a week. You’ll go mad otherwise and it’ll make sure you’re not diverted from the main goal – quality content!
That’s a detailed and well worded article Rob, play the game safely and you will gain after time, try and cheat and you’ve already failed. Top Stuff.
My word, Toon, I’ve only just finished editing it and you’ve already commented! Thanks for helping me out the other day by identifying a font in your excellent design forum!
Ha Ha, no worries mate, you should be honored I don’t usually get time to comment as much as I’d like to on blogs but this was really worthy of praise, I’m sure it will help a lot of people.
I’m the same. If someone’s done me a good turn I try to do one back, that’s all I’ve got time for these days. Thanks for commenting!
Involvement in forums or bulletin boards is also a great way to bring new visitors to your site, especially if its a specialty site or niche blog. You’ll often find that the folks on those types of forums are a tight-knit and very supportive community, usually all too eager to help each other out.
This is a very relevant post, and being new to the whole links idea is very useful information for me. I look forward to reading your future post.
Excellent tips, I couldnt of put it better my self.
I totally agree with your thoughts on 3 ways links, at the end of the day google most cetainly isnt stupid.
nice post, i look forward to more like this
This sums up the linking and PageRank factors nicely. Thanks especially for providing details of the directories.
I’m curious about the social media sites (StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg etc) and whether a link via one of these sites has equivalent value to an inbound link from somewhere else. I’m even more curious about whether links bouncing around on twitter have any bearing for Google.
Hello Rob O, I completely agree with you about forums – always add your link to your signature. And you’re right about the community. I like Toon’s forum: Estetica Design Forum
Thank you Justin, I hope you come back to read more.
And same to you Phil, thanks for popping by.
Tracey, good point, I was deliberately vague about this. I checked a few social networking/bookmarking sites and their links were
rel="nofollow"orrel="bookmark"and my feeling is that these links don’t help you up your PageRank. However, if someone on the social networking/bookmarking site follows the link to your page, likes it, and then links to it, then you do get link juice from it, indirectly. So any type of link is good as long as it’s not from a “bad neighborhood”. Cheers!You touched on a really important point in your comment there, Rob…
Any link that gets visitors to your site is a good link. Spend your time & efforts on doing what you can to compel them to stay around and become regular readers. Lots of bloggers obsess over and spend inordinate amounts of time striving for PageRank, Alexa, and other stats & rankings but really, what’s important is this: Are you getting visitors and how many of those are repeats or subscribers?
A link to your site’s always good, whether or not it’s a DoFollow. A good PageRank is not going to to give you a better marketing potential, for a blogger, it’s more than important to achieve some REAL readers/Followers, not just TRAFFIC to stay for a long time..
I like to get a few links by commenting on wonderful dofollow blogs like yours, lol…
Seriously, though, the right content is a key to getting the inbound link thing happening. Good advice.
And I’d comment here whether the blog was df or nf, just in case you have any doubts.
Rob O. thanks for popping back to make that important point. You’re right that spending time and effort on your site will compel visitors to stay and return.
Rofikul Islam Shahin you’re right, real readers are what you want, not just traffic that stays for one second.
Pepper haha!Thanks for your comment and I’m sorry at the moment I’m still nofollow. Me too, I’d comment whether a blog was df or nf, I just comment because I like the post or I think I can add something. Hurrah for commenters like you!
This was a good post. I like everyone’s comments about the forums. I seem to get good results from forums and article submission. If you stick with some good ones, you’ll do just fine.
You have explained the complete SEO in one article.
I don’t give more importance to PR. For me the thing that is important is back links and good traffic… PR is not completely our hand…
Great list! I would add these other methods: forum posting (you can add your links in your signatures), squidoo lenses, free classifieds, and press releases.
Jon, yes, stick with just a few good original articles.
Hello Sydney, a lot of people say that the importance of PageRank is severely limited however for ranking pages there is simply nothing else out there.
Hi Jimmy, thanks and thank you for your other recommendations. Can you give us some links to free classifieds? Craig’s list and Gumtree?
“Reciprocal links are the “Scratch your back” method of SEO.” 🙂 excellent way to explain reciprocal link. love it.
Wow, I never would have thought about the checking to see which sites are linking to your competition to see if they will link to you! Genius idea 🙂
For the blog commenting, I wish everyone who was dofollow would start implementing keyword luv (i have it on my site for those unfamiliar with it) – basically your readers can have real names AND get their link with anchor text they want 🙂
Great list and tips, thank you!
Thank you, kriszha, haha!
Thank you, Chelle, for commenting. I got that idea from one of the many SEO articles I’ve read so unfortunately I can’t claim genius! Keyword Luv looks great. I’m afraid I still get a lot of comment spam as I’m on lists of doFollow blogs.
Nice blog; enjoyed and agreed with it. The bottom line for me is that Content is King…and if Search Engines are doing their job, they will always find quality sites who put their customers’ interests first.
Frank
Great post, thanks for the tips. As for stumpleupon, I read on a few blogs that it does increase traffic but usually it’s not quality visitors. In other words they don’t stay around very long, let alone return.
You have explained the complete SEO in one article.
Thanks, Frank, I agree with you 110%, content is King!
And thanks, Derek, I agree with you as well about StumbleUpon. You get a quick hike in your visitors over and day who stay for 1 second and go never to return.
Thanks, dizi izle, but this is not the whole story when it comes to SEO – there are other things like optimising your site and writing killer content all explained on this site.
hi man thanxxx for all the info im a dj in south africa and would like to get more traffic and links to my website to market myself.
please send me an email if you have more tips your information above is highly appreciated love and respect and gods blessings to you
Great article. I have stumbled which I think illustrates the most imortant point. Write good stuff and you will get inbound links.
Being part of a forum (or twitter) community can help build awareness of what you are doing and the rest will follow.
very good article Rob, will make use of the 50 directories for sure.
Hi jazzy, best of luck with marketing yourself. More tips to come here if you subscribe by email.
Very good point Norman, if you invest a little bit of time and effort into a community results will follow.
Hi Louie, good to see you popping back, don’t work too hard submitting links to those directories!
I think that commenting on do-follow blogs only could be a mistake. We all know that Google is no fool and if they see that there are 100 do-follow blog links pointing to your site and 0 no-follow blog links, they’ll know that this is not natural and you will get punished.
Thank you, Voice and data for the comment.
Hello Britney, I couldn’t agree with you more. Commenting only on do-follow blogs would also damage your reputation and make you be viewed suspiciously by those blog owners. Thanks for the comment!
The social scoreboards are a very good tool.
The directories , I always bear them in mind
Commenting is a necessary aspect of blogging as it’s what creates backlinks. I do believe that commenting should be widely distributed as appossed to merely at DoFollow sites.
Yes, social networking, forums, comments on blogs, it all counts.
Absolutely, Hanna, I quite agree with you. If you comment just for link juice, you will get found out and your comments deleted. But comment because you like the post or you have something to say and you will make friends and get backlinks eventually. Thank you.
Getting links to your site is never easy. As you said you can get some traffic and links from social networking sites, but you need more than that,.
Thanks for sharing – having tried and implemented them,I think both commentluv and keywordluv are great for bloggers and commenters – Its also a great way to improve your brand too. The nofollow attribute still serves as an anchor to your site with no Search benefits.
Rob
Any link posted on your blog will *NOT* get link juice. This is a “nofollow” blog software, I knew this all along and felt most free and at ease then.
But at the same time, that should make you feel more relaxed also. For example I submitted two links of two websites that I’ve redesigned as an example of Flash use. And the post was deleted possibly as suspected spam.
This is how “nofollow” works:
If I post a link to a website I am trying to promote – if it’s “nofollow” blog – then I not only waste my time but I *lose* valuable Google juice. That is fact.
Which is why I am very careful never to mention the URLs I am trying to promote on a nofollow blog. But don’t really mind mentioning the ones that are strongly established and can be therefore suffer the negative PR hit.
When promoting a website on a blog, some people dig out “DoFollow” blog directories and so forth. They are truly good for promotion and link juice but never “nofollow” ones.
When I am on a nofollow blog, I just feel like a break and chatting nothing else – my intention is never promotion. So I use my real name (as opposed to of Keyword1 + Keyword2) and I use my own website – which I never care about.
In short, anyone adding links here, they always lose – and you always gain. You retain PR. And on top of that you get extra points for “refreshing” content. Google likes busy blogs.
So it pays to give them the benefit of the doubt before deleting a post with external links.
But on the other hand if it is a boring and useless comment – then sure, delete it by all means – it is after all *your* blog and as such you get to decide.
This is a great post. I will do this for my website..
Thanks for this………….
When I am on a nofollow blog, I just feel like a break and chatting nothing else – my intention is never promotion.
It’s good to talk!
don’t we all love to get backlinks from quality sites ..
what we have to offer to the visitor will rule …
thx
You’re right, Shyati, content is king. Quality websites get quality links!
That is very useful seo article. Thanks for this post. 🙂
Very good information. Ive seen the most results from social bookmarking. Digg in particular seems to be very good in getting fast results.
Social bookmarking and forums were two things I rather missed out of this article. Never mind, next time!
These SEO tips are very good in getting fast results.
it’s such a great article. i’ll tell about this site to my friends too.
Good SEO information for newbie like me. I’m trying to promote my websites without any success. I leaned good tips on the site and I’ll try some of these techniques.
H. Tanaka
I strongly agree and have forwarded it to a number of associates who found it very useful, keep up the good work.
I read your post and wished I’d wtreitn it
Thanks, Taran!
Great post, thanks for the tips. As for stumpleupon, I read on a few blogs that it does increase traffic but usually it’s not quality visitors. In other words they don’t stay around very long, let alone return.
Thanks, Nice Ä°nformation …
does anyone know the exact time seonetlinks is coming out? i heard it’s an amazing way to generate tons of traffic
Thank you for writing this, beautiful!
very thank you..
Love your blog so I’m going to subscribe
very good article Rob, will make use of the 50 directories for sure.
Thank you, mirc
Hi there, I enjoyed reading through this article, I wanted to write a little comment to support you and wish you a good continuation. All the best for all your blogging efforts. Got great ideas about links here.
Thanks, Paul.
Awesome article
I love it when people get together and share thoughts.
Great website, stick with it!
Thanks, Alexis
That is really fascinating.
Rob, you write really good. I am new to IT and learning things for venturing in. Your blog is a great deal of knowledge and I am going to link it in resource group of mine. Its a lovely post.
Thank you.
I hope you do not mind me visiting and thanking you
for the blog post – it genuinely helped
Greetings! I’ve been following your web site for a long time now and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out from New Caney Tx! Just wanted to say keep up the good work!
Very straight forward views shared… seoptimizers busted here!… 🙂
Thank you, Sam. I hope so!
Very good read. You pinpointed a regular mistake of mine (until now, that is):
Thank you, Rob.
Glad it helped, Simon