I know you. You're that guy who chants:
More social bookmarking, blog commenting, forum posting and article marketing!
When you hear me count back from 3 to 1, you will awaken feeling refreshed and reflecting that:
Every time I social bookmark, blog comment, forum post or market an article a kitten dies
Talk about positive behaviour modification! Pairing an uncomfortable outcome with an undesirable behaviour like this is called aversion therapy. This will work unless you actually dislike cats, in which case the uncomfortable outcome could easily be replaced with electrocution. Just my contribution to repairing the web...
So, we've established that since links are like votes, links must be voluntarily given for them to carry more weight. Of course, fellow webmasters are more likely to link to your site if it publishes excellent content. This is fundamental to the success of any link building campaign. You must get your content right. Assuming that you have good content, let's look at some ways you can attract high quality links - naturally.
Article Marketing
Hold on. Didn't article marketing appear in the ineffective way of building links section. What gives?
As always, there's a right way to do something and there's a wrong way to do something. Here is the right way to do article marketing:
- Find a good site on which you'd like to advertise your own site. It should have content that is related to yours.
- Ask the owner of the site if they'd like you to write a personalised article for them. If appropriate, dazzle them with samples of your splendidly written content. Suggest subjects to write about that their readers may be interested in. Ask for a link back to your site where the article is published.
- Write said article
There are several advantages of marketing your articles in this way.
Firstly, you have picked a good site for your article and link to appear on. Your criteria for "good" may differ from the next webmaster's, but often a good site will attract large volumes of traffic, have high PR pages or be an authority in the space. This means that you have a good chance of benefiting from your link by receiving large volumes of traffic yourself, or getting a good boost in the search engines.
You are also establishing a useful business relationship with the site owner. If they like the article, they may accept others that you tailor to their needs. The more contacts you have, the more opportunities will materialise.
Networking
Let's look at forums as they are easily accessible to most people. If you are a member of a forum, you rub virtual shoulders with many likeminded individuals. Many will have sites in similar niches to your own. By participating in a forum, not only do you make yourself aware of opportunities to promote your site, but you also establish your presence. You can benefit from forum participation in the following ways:
- A fellow forum member is impressed with your knowledge and writing style and wants you to write an article for them. The unspoken assumption is that a link to your website will be given in return.
- If you are helpful and demonstrate knowledge, you spark interest in you and your site. There's a good chance that people will visit and link.
Use Existing Contacts
I'll illustrate this method with an example. I have a successful site about a product in niche X. Because the content was good and also exclusive to my site, it attracted many very good links. Bolstered by the success of this first site, I decided to create another site about the next release of the product. Because the site is in the same niche, those good links will be just as helpful to my new site as they were to my original site. I'm now in the process of asking the people who linked to my original site whether they would like to link to my new site in order to help their visitors. Here's a breakdown of the steps for those who like bulletpointed lists as much as I do:
- Find all the sites that link to my original site. You can learn how to analyse inbound links with Yahoo! Site Explorer here.
- When you find a site that links to yours and it looks like a good site to get a link from, use the contact details published on the site. If there are no contact details, you can determine who owns the site by looking at the WHOIS information.
- Some website owners hide registrant details for privacy purposes, but if you can find an email you can use it.
- Contact the owner using the email and request a link to your new site. Emphasize the benefits to their visitors of linking to your valuable resource. If there are no benefits to their readers of visiting your site, don't request a link.
Publish Excellent Content
Awww, but that means I have to work! Yes, it does. But all good things are worth working for. If you have poor quality content, the only links you'll be able to get are ... low quality ones. And they won't bring much traffic or help you much in the search engines. If, on the other hand, you have really good quality content you'll find that over the course of time your pages will accumulate links all by themselves. You'll need to get your content in front of enough eyeballs first, but you'll discover a snowball effect that works like this:
- Your new site only ranks for a few low competition terms that don't get many searches.
- A smattering of people visit.
- Eventually somebody links to your site.
- That links helps you rank for more phrases.
- Those better rankings put your content in front of more eyeballs, thus attracting more links.
- The process repeats as you gain more links and better rankings.
Note that this is a slow process that can be sped up if you use the following methods with caution:
- Social bookmarking.
Yes, I know I said it was bad in Building Links The Wrong Way. Social bookmarking can be a bad idea if you rely on it for sustained traffic. However, it can be a useful tool to kickstart your site's marketing efforts. - Link appropriately to articles on your site.
This does not mean lurking on forums and spamming your link at any opportunity. If you are a member of a forum, ideally you'll make valued contributions and if you genuinely think your article may help someone, you can refer them to it. Others may follow the link, thus giving your site more exposure to potential linkers. Important note: the link you give usually will not have much SEO value in itself, but its value lies in giving your site more exposure to those people who may themselves link to it.
Be First On The Scene
There is a big advantage in publishing content about a particular subject before anybody else. Firstly, people interested in your chosen subject have to come to you to get information on it. More traffic for you. Secondly, there is little competition for this subject in the search engines so you should find it easier to rank in them. Copious amounts of traffic for you. Thirdly, if someone needs to link to a reference on the subject, they will have to link to your site as there are no other sites providing material about this subject. And what do links make? That's right - higher rankings.
Provide A Service To Another Website
This is a time consuming exercise and so should only be undertaken to get a link from a very desirable website. This guy created translations of W3C pages to get high value links to his site. That's innovative.
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