Link Building Strategies Explained

Link building….what a nightmare! If you feel the same way as me, and I know many SEO’s do, link building is probably the bane of your life.

However, it needs to be done and is one of the most important elements of search engine optimisation (SEO) as well as a continuous and ongoing task!

So with that in mind, I thought I’d post about some of my favourite link building techniques.

1. Directories It’s a bit old school, but shouldn’t be forgotten or overlooked. Top SEO directories that I use as standard are Yahoo directory, Best of the Web directory and Go Guides. I tend to use or recommend these no matter what industry. Then I’d search for industry relevant directories in Google and submit if free or seek out directories where you can get a relevant page with some page rank if paying.

2. Article Directories This method can take time and often agencies are employed to supply content for article submission. Google and other search engines hold many article directories like ezinearticles.com, to be authoritative sites, so links can be beneficial. The other advantage about article submissions is that you’re getting links from relevant on content pages as you’ve written the content yourself so can be sure that it is relevant to your content and targeted keywords - and if you’re not using that thought process when writing your articles you should be.

3. Guest Blog Posting In order to find suitable guest blogs, I’d recommend entering the following search query into Google:

Keyword “Guest Post”

Keyword “Guest Blog”

This will enable you to find relevant blogs who have accepted guest posts in the past. Simply find their contact details and contact them to see if you can write for their blog in return for a link back to your site. This technique has the same advantage as the article writing in that you can design your own content around your targeted keywords to ensure a link back from a highly relevant page.

4. Associates This is a technique that is often overlooked and in my mind, often the most effective. Sometimes it can be as simple as getting on the phone to your industry associates and requesting a link. If you are a supplier for other manufacturers, make sure you’re listed on their websites, speak to your contacts, try to build new relationships with this aim in mind. You could also look online for potential associates with content relevant to your targeted keywords and consider sponsorship, or discuss other associations such as offering a discount to their customers. Whilst there are loads of other good link building strategies and it’s beneficial to use a bit of lots of them, I’m going to leave it at that - I did say I was just going through my favourites, and these 5 alone can give you a varied and natural looking link building strategy if implemented well.

Angie Stewart, Online Marketing Consultant for Maginus Online Marketing Services