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link building tactics

We’ve recently seen that link building is well alive as a SEO tactic. It is still a great opportunity to increase your rank. You just need to be conscious that search engine’s algorithms are becoming more and more “intelligent”, and they value quality over quantity nowadays.

This applies to link building too, therefore we will provide you with top link building tactics for today’s SEO, divided into 3 groups:

  • Simple: least effective but very easy to execute.
  • Medium: more effective that Simple ones, and also more requiring in terms of energy and time.
  • Pro: most effective link building nowadays, but very demanding in terms of effort.

We’ll start today with 23 simple tactics. Medium and Pro will follow later on!

Affiliate Program. If you use an affiliate program, you get links from affiliates and bloggers who like your content.

Business Card. It won’t be the top information in there, but you never know who gets your business card until you hand that over. So do not forget to include a link to your website or blog. If you haven’t write it down by hand while handling the card over.

Blog Comment. Being active in user-generated content websites, you promote your own site/blog.

Classified Site. Craiglist and other such websites drive some traffic, as long as the website itself is not considered spam and your content fit the right category.

Control Copy&Paste. There are tools out there that are triggered every time copy&paste your own content, adding a link to your original webpage/post. For instance, if somebody quotes your great last post copying and pasting a chink of text from your domain, along with the text you can pull a link saying something like “To know more visit <<your website>>”. You do not have control on the final result, your fellow blogger can delete this or can actually like it (as it saves time to quote the source). But it is worthwhile having a try.

Email Signature. Featuring your website or blog in your email footer might be able to generate some traffic and links. Do not expect miracles but it doesn’t cost any effort.

Free Deal. If you can do graphic design or web/mobile development, propose your services to valuable websites/blogs in your niche, for free. Ask them just to be linked back. It is difficult to find the right opportunity (a valuable website usually have pro doing these jobs), but you never know. Also, you might want to propose setting up free blogs for others, such as in WordPress, having in change a link to your own website/blog. Again, relevance is key: ask to be linked only to bloggers on your own space, otherwise you’ll look weird to visitors and to search engines.

Guest Blogging Contest. If you are good enough to being featured in a guest blog contest you get high quality links in return, as organizations running these contests are usually well-named. Not to mention the chance to win your prize!

Give Trackback. When somebody links to your content, give them a do-follow link back. They’ll be likely to consider and link again other content you’ll publish.

Google+. As a social media platform Google+ has probably failed (and rumors are Google will gradually break up most popular features and keep them as stand-alone), but Google+ still has some impact in search engine optimization, as its content is indexed by Google. So if you’re on Google+ share your content and it will be seen as result in Google searches.

Guest Book. Really a Nineties feature, but some websites still have it. If you come across one, there’s no harm in leaving your link.

HARO (Help A Report Out). For those who don’t know, it is a website were journalist or press professionals look for industry, market, and niche expert to get insights and help on their writing and reports. Linking your content in HARO you may land high-quality links from papers.

Intern Vacancy Posting. If you are structured enough to be able to host interns, propose your vacancy to colleges and universities. They’ll be happy to link back, and their .edu links are very well weighted by search engines. Always available other options such as Monster and Indeed. They give you less quality links, but a lot more in terms of quantity.

Link Roundups. If you promote other site/blog content if your own site/blog, you drive traffic to them. Chances are the guy you linked up will return the favor.

Newsletter (yours). Have a newsletter in place? What a better place to include links to your most popular content, or content you want to drive traffic to.

Newsletter (external). Unless you are a top influential thought leader, you want to promote your content through well-established channels in your industry. Hard to get there, but you can always have a go.

Paid Review. It is definitely a grey hat tactic, but you might want to pay for being reviewed (and linked) by an authority in your industry, that can be a magazine or an independent blogger. You get 2 benefits: links from a valuable source, and an easier outreach: you can email webmasters of other website you’d like to be linked to, saying “hey John, have you seen my last article that, by the way has been featured in XYZ?”. It’s something to be careful, though. Do not look for spam (and cheap) reviewers or you’ll be actually penalized. Remember that Google consider your neighborhood: good sources link to you, you’re likely to be a high-value website too. Spam websites link to you, you’re likely to be spam too.

Scraped Content. If somebody copy&paste your content to their own website/blog you have the right to be liked back otherwise it is copyright infringement.

Syndication. Not very popular these days, but if you submit your articles and posts to such websites you obviously get links to your website. Same principle applies to website, eBook, press release, video, image, RSS feed, logo, and even web cam directories. Do not forget non-English directories if your website in in multiple languages.

Tool-free Number Directory. If you have a tool-free number you can list that in free directories and get a list back.

Twitter. Apart from sharing your content through Twitter, with a chance to be linked back by your followers, remember to include your URL in your Twitter profile.

User Review. Do you like testing new things and writing? Register to a rating review website, submit your reviews and link back your profile to your website.

Wikipedia. Mentioning your content in Wikipedia articles might be able to drive lots of high-value traffic to your websites. Links are nofollow (they won’t influence your search engine ranking) but quality of traffic is valuable. Also, if you or your company have already some credit, you may want to create your own Wikipedia page. Just make sure to have somebody else writing it, as Wikipedia do not like auto celebration…

For more, slightly advanced link building tactics, see: 27 WAYS TO FURTHER BOOST YOUR LINK BUILDING

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