Top 5 link building techniques

It is now common knowledge that Google is cracking down on websites that pay for inbound links. Paying for links has always been viewed as ‘morally grey’ from an SEO perspective, but now more and more sites are being penalised and dropping out of the rankings. As such, we are now getting asked a lot more about our natural link building techniques. So, in answer to your questions, here are 5 top link building techniques:

• Directory submission: It’s an old favourite, but directory submission is a great way to instantly get links to your site. We recommend not using any type of automated submission process or program, but instead manually selecting appropriate directories. Make sure that you include high PR business directories such as BOTW, Yahoo directory and of course human edited and niche directories.
• Link bait: Link baiting was once considered bad practice, but is now an acceptable and very powerful link building strategy. A link bait normally involves creating something on your website that is either useful, humorous, or unique in such a way that people will link to it (a bit like a viral).
• Article submission: Writing good quality content and submitting them to announcement sites is a great way to get good quality inbound links to your site. The article should be about something related to your industry, and will be made publicly available for others to read and use on their own site. The article will include a link back to your site which can provide a huge quantity of relevant links back to your site.
• Blogging, forums and comments: Writing good quality content on your site will attract visitors and links to your site. If you write good content, you will be perceived as an expert within your industry or niche. This can be backed up by regularly posting on forums (which can also include links in i.e. footers) and by leaving comments on other blogs in your industry. Some webmasters will allow links from the comment to your site, which can be powerful links if they are .edu or .gov sites.
• Reciprocal linking: Reciprocal linking gets a lot of bad press, and there are many SEO experts that believe it has little or no value. However, for a new website reciprocal linking can be very useful. Linking to other sites helps Google to categorize your website, and the reciprocal link will no doubt have a higher PR than your site so it will be a good link. You may also generate a lot of traffic from these links if it is from a popular website. Additionally, you could be a bit sneaky and ”nofollow” your link back to the site…

Hopefully this will answer a lot of the questions you have a give you a good start on your link building strategy. The great thing about link building is that over time your inbound links will rise exponentially as it gathers momentum (a snow ball effect). The downside of link building is that is can be very time consuming, and you have to be very careful about who you link back to!

There are many other techniques that you many find useful, including the current buzzword, ’social media’. Most links from social media sites do have the “nofollow” attribute, but having a large quantity of links can help generate traffic and your trust rank. We would always recommend leaving link building to an online marketing expert, such as ourselves! For more information, feel free to get in touch.