Link Building Basics: How People Actually Build Links?
There are various ways of getting links these days, many of which cause a lot of arguments between competing SEOs. Some SEOs say that the paid links are not as powerful as they used to be 6 months ago, whereas some SEOs say it is still very powerful. Who knows what paid links are? I personally think all these arguments are useless.
Directories
Let’s not forget this used to be one of the most beneficial methods of link building. But does it still work? I believe so, yes. It might not be as powerful as it used to be but it does appear to have a slight effect on rankings. There are thousands of free directories out there which you will be able to get links from, meaning this should be at least a small part of your output.
Another way adding your listing is via the paid option on those directories. Many people choose to pay the directories for their listing because it takes only few days for the directory to approve your listing. Whereas when you submit it as free it can take upto 3 to 4 months. But isn’t this a paid link? The term ‘paid link’ is extremely hard to define, and could perhaps best be described as links that upset natural user experience, rather than simply the literal definition.
Blog comments
Blog commenting is not a particularly good way of building natural links, but it is a technique that nearly every SEO will have used in the past.
Forum registration
Find relevant forums, register with them and you’ll be able to add a link either on your profile or in your signature. The process is extremely simple, but it’s a very time consuming way of building links.
Social Bookmarking
How could we leave this one out? There are thousands of social network sites out there, all of which allow you easy links to your website.
CSS Gallery
This is another type of directory where you can submit your website. All you have to do is add the website and then validate your html and css files as these css directories tend to check if it validates correctly. If it has got errors in it, it won’t be accepted by the CSS directories.
Use W3C validator to check your site. This is what you should see:
Article Marketing
One of the best methods of getting links is to write an article about the product and then have a link to that product’s page from the article. This is not rocket science and is probably a method many SEOs currently use.
Guest blogging
This is the big thing around these days. How can you get links through guest blogging? Simple: have a link on your bio. Write a post, put a bio at the bottom and there you have your link.
Where to find blogs?
- One way is through “my blog guest”. You be will be able to get in touch with blog owners who are looking for blog writers.
- Another way is to find it manually through search engines, then contacting the blog owners directly.
- If you have a lot of clients, do they have blogs? Why not write for your client about their product, but have a link going to another of your clients.
Link Bait
This can be anything from infographics, videos, blog posts or anything else that will gain traction with audiences. The idea here is that quality, relevant content will cause other blog owners and webmasters to link to the content on their own pages, meaning the links are coming in to you.
Saurav is a SEO geek working for a web design company that’s deals with outdoor toys such as trampolines and climbing frames.
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23 Responses to “Link Building Basics: How People Actually Build Links?”
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Just an opnion about Blog Commenting:
People – not generalizing – have a distorced concept about getting links on comments – both publishers and readers.
Links on comments should not be majoritarily no-followed. If someone is enriching the content of a post/page, a link is a simple ‘thank-you’. Publishers should be grateful to insights that a comment may offer.
‘Readers’ should not randomly comment. ‘Commenting-for-links’ comments should just be extinguished from systems (I know, a lot of them already is). Readers should comment (not only, but when ‘requesting’ links) on contents of their set of knowledge.
Fortunatelly there are systems adopted by some (a lot) of blogs that provide do-follow on valuable comments!
And of course, there are more pros and cons about the issue.
I agree on your first point: Directories
I have been reviewing blog directories for some years and you have to be picky when submitting your blog to a new directory, I may suggest you read my specific reviews on my blog.
I welcome your comments as well!!
thanks
And the best way to build links:
Build tools that people will actually use. The community will link naturally to you. You will not even need to ask for a link
Have you actually tested if blog commenting does not work? So much bullshit is spread in the SEO community and then just gets repeated.. i don’t mind. Yeah blog commenting does not work – thats why all the viagra guys keep doing it – they love wasting money on stuff that does not work.
Article Marketing – what year is it? I find most article directorys pass little or no authority – waste of time.
I think that the articles will rank the best…..still
But now I will try the CSS-Gallery!
@Vini
Most people are already no following the links on their blogs and soon we will have no follow links on every blog comments, but it hasn’t been fully done yet.
@Danny
That is not entirely correct, I cannot show you the examples but I can assure you it has worked for several SEOs. In regards to article marketing being useless, there is no difference in guest blogging or article marketing (they both are the same process).
Vini B Peixoto Reply:
August 25th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Hello, @Saurav,
“Most people are already no following the links on their blogs”
Yeah, that’s the point. Why on earth are not people ‘grateful’ about insightful comments received? Just give the commenter a simple do-follow link. That’s a two way benefit.
“and soon we will have no follow links on every blog comments”
I’m not sure about that. There are a lot of blogs using plugins like Comment Luv (that provide dofollow comments) and their experience using it don’t make them want to ‘come back’.
And how to cope with spam or pointless comments? Moderation and/or antispam plugins. Simple like that.
Saurav Reply:
August 26th, 2010 at 8:49 am
Yes I see your point, if the comment is long enough and relevant then the commenter definitely deserves a do follow link, but then again what is the benefit if there are hundreds of relevant comment with hundreds of do follow links?
When we are looking for a do follow comment link, we look for powerful sites, but do these blog owners who use “comment luv” have a powerful blog? There are lots of other things to look at as well.
We can discuss about this all day and all night long but in the end we know we both have points
).
Vini B Peixoto Reply:
August 26th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Fair enogh
.
Vini B Peixoto Reply:
August 26th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Oops. “Enough”
A lots of directories are “dead” so if you don’t have a big list with “alive” directories it’ll be a full waste of time to submit 300 directories or more. Maybe after month or two you will be approved, but it’s still waste of time only if u pay for this service it’ll have some result. Social networks are really great opportunity to share your links and you get some traffic from them. (sry for my bad english)
Yes, you are right, I am a seoer and i like your article, but my english is not good, i used google translate, like your said, i used some way to build my links, i will do more! thanks!
I have been considering the directory issue for a few weeks, as a traffic builder primarily rather than SEO. However, I find most of them either “pay for” or spammish. I’d love to find out which directories are actually worth belonging to, as well as any directories specifically aimed at topic categories.
As for social bookmarking, I had little hope for this one originally, but recently have had some serious gains in traffic from StumbleUpon. I have accounts on SU, and recently opened accounts with Delicious and Digg, I think this one is a long-term strategy more than anything else.
Friend links is important to SEO.
I am now beginning to like blog commenting…
Links to any page and vote at voteroll.com … Blog commenting is a goo wy to be herd on opinion and addng a link to something related.
Thanks so much for another post. I be able to get that kind of information information. friend, and exactly.
thank you for post i love
Blog commenting seems to be the most used tehnique to get some backlinks, but, is far a good one. People forget about relevancy and try to get any link, doesen’t matter if that site got a poor PageRank, a poor Trust/Authority or no traffic. By the way, i bet on Deeplinks. Are preety hard to get, but they got a high value.
Web 2.0 properties like Suidoo and Hubpages allow you to build a mini website or webpage. This is a great way to get some anchor text links without too much effort.
Make sure the content is unique though!
Yes, excellent list for building links. Guest blogging does seem to be the latest craze, and it won’t be too long before we see sites dedicated to connecting blog owners for just this.
Really excellent?
These link building basics that you have mentioned here all play a part in search engine optimization. As a website owner you just have to identify which one works very well for you then start using it.