These days Google pays close attention to natural development of the backlinks to a website, and whatever the so called experts say, you can easily create a natural link profile for your website by using few link building strategies. These strategies are used by all top internet markers and businesses.
Best link building strategies for long-term results
Here you will learn some useful tips on how you can develop backlinks for your website and improve its ranking. But, no one strategy is permanent and if overdone they can lead to penalty from Search engines. That’s why use of common sense and knowledge is very important before.
• Blog comments for link building
Commenting on blogs relevant to the topics of your website is still a widely used link building strategy. Most blogs allow you to link your website to your comment along with your name. However, some people enter the keyword in the name section, which is an unnatural way of using this strategy. Always use your name in the name section. Further, post meaningful comments which are relevant to the topic of the blog post.In my experience blog comments on high quality blogs bring more targeted visitors to the website, and it usually have little effect on the of the ranking of website on Search engines, unless you’ve gotten a comment posted on one of the top authority websites of your niche.
Footprints to find relevant blogs
To find topics relevant blogs faster, you can use these terms in Google search (replace “keyword” with your niche topic”:
– Keyword “powered by wordpress” site: .edu
– Keyword “Leave a comment” site: .edu
– Keyword “reply to post” site: .edu
– Keyword “submit site”
– Keyword “post site”
– Keyword “add a url”
– Keyword site: .edu inurl: blog “Your e-mail address will not be published”
– Keyword “You may use these HTML tags”
– Keyword “powered by wordpress”
– Keyword “powered by blogger”
– Keyword “Leave a comment”
– Keyword “reply to post”
– Keyword “blog”
– Keyword “e-mail notification if more comments.”
– Keyword “add a site”
– Keyword “submit url”
– Keyword “post url”
Google commands to find relevant sites for blog comment
– inurl: “keyword” Find results with a specific word within the URL.
– allinurl: “keyword” Find results with more than one word in the URL.
– intitle: “keyword” Find results with a specific word in the title of the site.
– Related: “keyword” finds similar site – works mainly with larger sites.
– site: “keyword” Finds all results of a site that are in the index.
– intext: “keyword” Finding specific text within the page.
Link building with Niche Web directories
Submit your website to high quality web directories relevant to the niche of your website. This will not online create backlinks but also bring visitors to your website. But, don’t over dot it, because in past this method was spammed to death by SEOs any sign of web directory spam will lead to punishment from Google. Don’t sign up to directories that don’t moderate the websites being submitted. Put your website in only high quality well moderated web directories that accept only high quality sites into them.Submit your website in the local business directory of your city or province. Many cities have their own portals to list the local businesses. Make sure to get your website listed in them.
Forum Discussion link building strategy
Links can also be obtained from topic relevant forums. Add your URL in the forum signature and actively take part in the discussions and make meaningful contribution. This not online help you get backlinks for your website but also improve your authority on the topic in the eyes of the readers.Further, if you have a post on your website which adds to the topic of a discussion thread, you can share your website link along with your inputs to the post. Links in the forum thread contents are worth more than the links in signature or profile.
Regarding the term “Forum”, it also includes the question and answer portals, such as yahoo answers, quora, etc. These portals receive millions of visitors every day and are very useful for getting high quality traffic to your website.
Footprints to find relevant forums for link building
– Your keyword + “forum”
– Your keyword + “forum login”
– Your keyword + “Powered by vBulletin”
In my experience, forum discussions have good impact on the ranking of website on Google. They can be used as a traffic machine. Just make sure you contribute to the forums with active users and which are well moderated.
Link building with the help of social media
Using social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Xing, or Google+ you can raise your websites social media portfolio.Social signals can be generated by many methods. One should start by creating a page for their website on social media media platforms like, Facebook, Twitter, google+, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Install share button on your website so that your visitors can quickly share your website on their social media profiles. Above all is content, you should create high quality content to make sure it is shared by people. Further, keep on interacting with your social media followers.
How much value does Google give to the social signals is very difficult to answer. However, Its one of the most important signal along with links. Further, social networks are great sources to attract targeted traffic to your website.
Link building with Apps and plugins
Share you valuable content for free on different types of content curation and syndication websites.Create beautiful WordPress themes or useful WordPress plugins, and integrate your website url in it. Then offer it for free download. This will get your website valuable backlinks.
Further, you can use tools like videos, podcasts, etc. and post to video sharing and podcast websites with your website url. Further, you can place and share photos and images related to your website for free on platforms like Instagram. Pinterest, and Flickr and tweet them with interesting tweet.
Infographic are powerful link bulding tools
A good infographic often get much more attention than a webpage with lots of content. Many readers love the graphical representation and it help them understand the details much faster than going through a thousand word content.Create and publish the infographic in the free infographic sharing websites, and link it back to your website in the resource and author field.
How to create a good infographic for link building
The infographic should be contextual to the topic it’s representing.
It should be graphically appealing
It should explain the topic easily and in systemic way.
To create an awesome infographic, look for what’s trending in news and blogs and write down the important points and work it up graphically. Further, you can use Google trends to find the trending topics in niche. Further, for most impact make sure that your infographic provides genuine information to your audience that’s not already available anywhere in the graphical form. Good infographics get blogged and shared by bloggers and businesses in their website who link it back to the source that is your website. This leads to your website getting high quality niche relevant backlinks.
Be graphically appealing The purpose of the infographic is just a graphical representation of a theme or topic. It shouldn’t be confusing or convoluted as to deter the readers from exploring more about the topic, that’s why you should use good graphic design software’s or hire professional graphic designers to create your infographic. Infographic is one of those things you need to make right investment to get pleasing results.
A good example of a nice infographic can be found in the following post: (http://localhost/socialseoteam/blog/2015/01/03/infographic-how-to-do-seo-and-link-building-in-2015/ ).
Participating in Blog carnivals:
Blog carnivals, also called blog parades, are blogging events on a specific themes. The blogger writes about a topic and also requests other bloggers to write about the same topic and share their opinions and ideas. All contribution are finally compiled in the form of collection of links from the blog parade organizers. So, each contributor receives a backlink and this also leads to you coming in contact with other influencial bloggers in your niche.
Outreach link building
Contact the website and blog owners in your niche for a link exchange or placement. You will be surprised how many site operators will answer you and agree to a link exchange, especially if they find quality content about the topic in your website. However, avoid direct reciprocal linking at all costs, direct reciprocal linking can lead to penalty from Google.
Wikipedia and other top knowledge sharing websites
You can also use high authority websites like Wikipedia and put your website link in the article of matching theme.Although links from Wikipedia are set to No-follow, they are still considered by search engines as very valuable, and can improve your websites ranking in search engines. New search engines like DuckDuckGo uses Wikipedia likes to analyze the authority of a website. Further Wikipedia is visited by millions of people every day and can also bring targeted traffic to your website.
How to get links from Wikipedia:
search for the articles on your websites theme, and try to add your contribution to the article to improve its value or factual accuracy, and as a reference to the edits link to your blog or website with the information. However, I admit that it’s not really easy to find a post to give added value and get you’re the link to your website approved as the source of the information.
However, there is another way to get a backlink from Wikipedia. For this, go to an article on which you want to place a link and click the “discussion” tab. Ask questions and engage in discussion and ask other contributors if your website or blog page can be added as a source to the information. If other editors find it suitable, you will be able to get your website as the source of information in the article.
Guest Article and Blog posting:
Write great websites, blogs or online editors to whether you may publish a guest article on their pages.
Write high quality content for your blog and website and get in touch with other website and blog owners to check if they accept contribution from other bloggers and would accept your contributions to their blogs. If accepted, majority of the Blog allows the guest authors to link back to their website either in the blog post or in the author bio. Guest posting if done properly in a non-spammy way is still one of the best source of high quality backlinks.
Ego Baiting
Interview an authority figure in your niche and post it in your website. For this look for experts and ask them about their experience in your niche and how can other people do better. Post the interviews to social media to get audience, further link to other bloggers. If people find the information to be useful, they will share and link to the interview in their blogs and social accounts.
Link building with Content Marketing
Content marketing is a technique that should win with informative and unique content is a target group.
Content marketing is a technique deals in providing information and unique content to a target group. It can be done in many ways and we’ve already discussed infographic and media marketing which is also part of Content marketing.Content marketing basically means that promoting your blog post via different medium to get it maximum visibility. However, to effectively use this method you should make sure that the content is high quality and adds value to the knowledge of the target audience.
Many times people confuse “content marketing” with” link bait”. Link bait can be a good source to get backlinks and attract audience however it works only for short time and it also depends on the trends. However, content marketing if properly done is an evergreen link building technique to get valuable mentions and backlinks and increase the number of audience to the website. Content marketing is result oriented, more focused on quality of the content.
However, it is not easy to write a high quality post every time and hiring writers for the job can cost a lot. Further, many times the content marketing strategies doesn’t work and there is no control over who are sharing and linking to your website. Despite these disadvantages, many SEO’s swear on this strategy, because it’s the best way to acquire many natural backlinks, and improve your website authority and ranking on Google.
Some of the methods to create content to attract attention of the audience are funny news, unique content, case studies, interview, podcasts, videos, etc.
How do I find topics for content marketing?
If you want to get involved into content marketing, you need to find good topics. Most of the time writing about current trends in your niche, and tips on how to deal with different problems in your niche work best. One of the way is the get alerts from Google Trends on your topic. This way google with keep you updated with what is trending and which topics are getting most visitors. It will help you write engaging stuff for your audience.
Google search your niche and check the websites ranking on top. Especially their blog or news section to see what are they talking about to get some topic idea.
Just writing the article won’t lead your campaign to success. You need audience for your article for that share your article to as many platforms you can, especially forms and social media platforms.
If you want your content to be picked by other blogs, put yourself in the webmasters place and ask yourself these questions:
– Which websites link this?
– Why should this link to you?
– Provides your content on a problem-solving?
– Will a link from this website actually help your campaign?
– Why would the webmaster of that site link to you post?
– Does your content solve any problems that can be valuable to the visitors of the other website?
– Does your content theme and style matches the posts of the website?
If your answer is in affirmative after detailed analysis then contact the webmaster of the website and share your post with them. If it’s good enough, they will accept it and share on their blog with a link to your website.
The great thing about content marketing is that it’s the most natural way of acquiring backlinks for your website without any fear of getting penalized by Google in the present or future. Websites with best content always wins.
When planning content for your campaign take care of few things. Analyze the top three websites on the first page of Search engines and take a note of these things:
– What type of content does the competitors offer?
– How often the keyword (Googles keyword planner tool) searched on Google?
– What is the main focus of the content offered by the competitors?
– Can you offer even more information on the topic?
– Are people often talking about the topic on Forums, Question and answer boards, or social media?
Once you have clarity of those questions write a really good article of around 2,000 words (preferably more). Make the topic interesting with the use of lists, pictures, charts and videos whenever you can. Also make sure to include references as no one can know everything alone.
My approach to Content marketing
First of all, analyze current issues and trends on the topic I am creating the campaign for. Then I analyze how many times the topic is searched and see what the competitors has been writing on the topic.
If I couldn’t find enough information on the topic to write a good quality article, I look for books in online book sharing and store website and do a detailed research on the topic.
Armed with the knowledge I create an article of around 1500 to 3000 words (depending on the topic). It’s very important that you create the article in good readable format, use sub headers, write so that a even layman can understand the topic properly. Use slides, pictures, and videos when possible. Creating a good content can be a lot of work, so dive into this endeavor only if you are confident of creating a high quality article for your targeted audience.
If done properly content marketing can lead to huge growth in your business in very short time.
Web 2.0 blogs and websites:
You can use web 2.0 properties websites to acquire high quality backlinks for your website. If you decimate high quality content across the web 2.0 properties you can actually attract traffic to your website. Web 2.0 websites include free blogs like Blogger.com, WordPress.com, hubpages.com, tumblr.com, medium.com, answers.yahoo.com, quora.com, skyrock.com and posthaven.com. The advantage of such website is that these are free and already have a high trust score from Google and they get millions of visitors every day. When creating web 2.0 propeties, only unique and helpful contributions should be made. Content should be at least 600-800 words should have these items. Including Podcast, Youtube videos, downloadable content and other unique objects are also beneficial to boost the authority of the web 2.0 properties.
In this post I’ve already discussed the most effective white-hat link building methods that are still working in 2016. Applying these methods take time and patience however, the results they bring can take your business to new heights. However, common sense is the most important thing in the internet marketing. If you don’t use your common sense it can lead you to wasting time and financial resources on campaigns without achieving any results.
In coming days we will discuss more on new link building techniques and more advanced methods of acquiring links for your website.
