This is a part of the Beginner SEO Series by Mak Cronin. Do read the other parts of the series:
Part 1: Checking Your Competitor Backlinks
Part 2: Optimizing On Page SEO
The mysterious part of the SEO world is the link building side of it! We have looked at the optimising your site side of things, now it is time to look at some link building techniques!
Firstly for me it is important to remember that as SEOs link building comes easy because we have done so much research. However when we really look back to how we started, it took a long time to find out where to begin! So for you guys I thought I would create a list of options, for good places to start, and give reasons why they work!
- Directory link building: Right using directories as a way of gaining links can work in your advantage. It depends on which directories you submit too! Paid directories may sound wrong, but they can be very effective, Yahoo and Yellow Pages are legitimate and powerful directories, they also give you a relevant strong link back to your site. Paid Directory links are not “Bought Links” which are considered black hat by Google (So don’t worry). If you are running low on cash, you can also submit to free directories. They are a little more spam friendly, but it is still a link, and if you get it on a relevant site then it is even more powerful! One way to find these free directories could be like this: Go into Google, and type in “Submit Site” and then “your Keyword”. Make sure that you include the Quote Marks as well, this will bring back a list of results!
- Article Submissions: Do you fancy yourself a bit of a writer? If you do then you can generate yourself some great link building opportunities. As long as you have some good content to post then you can usually get it published with a link or two. These are usually not very powerful and there are many of these article directory submission lists out there. Just one to get you started is Distribute Your Articles. This give you the chance to submit one of your articles to a whole list of article directories, with a couple of links! It is well worth looking at these, as well as Guest Posting, as they make for good links, and you have earned them!
- Competitor Links! As discussed in the first post, locating your competitors back links is a key move. It allows you to find out how they link, and where they get there links from. This gives your site the potential to obtain the same power, and to help you boost up in the rankings. This also gives you the chance to move above those that are the most difficult to get past. Check out the First Beginner SEO post!
- Niche Links! Search for opportunities based solely around your web sites niche. You would be surprised; things like “Get Listed Here” allow you to get a high profile relevant link. Depending on the power of the site of course. For Tour Operators there are lists very much like directories but they are specifically for Tour Operators, not travel agents. Make sure that you investigate even the most specific of avenues!
Hope that this is helpful, and also don’t be too scared to link to your deeper pages, these could be more relevant, and there is no harm linking to pages other than your home page. Some directories may be a little funny about this but in general it should be fine!
This is a guest post by Mark C. If you want to guest post for us then please check the Guest Posting Guidelines.
Mark C works with a Caribbean holidays Tour Operator heading up their SEO Team!
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Link building is the “bread and butter” for SEO. Proper link building strategy can make your SERP very high and stable. Link competitor analysis, directory submission, article submissions, blog commening, social bookmarks, forum signatures – everything helps a lot. There are some viral ways to achieve link bait, but those strategies are advanced and not always successful.
John´s last blog ..SEO Outsourcing can Save Time
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Nice.. using a reciprocal links for directory good ? worth ? many free directories have these reciprocal linking method only.
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Mark C Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
It depends on how you provide a reciprocal link!
Between you and me…..
It could work if you can get them to give you a link to your homepage and you link back from a Resources page…
A little bit tricky, but it is still a legitimate link. Personally i don’t do this, but I have seen some big brands do it like this, and it seems to work for them. Generally speaking I am not keen on Reciprocal links.
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Siva Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Even i don’t like that. But many free directory provide in that way only ..
Siva´s last blog ..Future of Internet-2020
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link building is the most important part of the seo process.
hisam´s last blog ..تحميل تنزيل لعبة Helicopter Strike 3D 17
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Shiva Chettri Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Yup, you are right Hisam. It is the most important part, the Core of SEO
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People usually stress on increasing backlinks for homepage of the blog but backlinks for deeper or internal pages of the blog can certainly increase the authority of the internal pages as well.
Asad @ Apple Apps´s last blog ..Browser of the Future –is there any
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Shiva Chettri Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
You are right, actually bringing backlinks to other pages of your blog can get you lot of traffic from long tail keywords. Thanks god some one made commentluv which helps us with the inner page backlinking
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Nice Research.. A Very Good Article!
Chethan´s last blog ..KickAss Torrents Goes in Beta 20
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Shiva Chettri Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Glad you liked it Chethan
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One of the best and most powerful way to achieve Page rank is through “Link building”,i experienced more with link building when i got my first page rank recently…
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Shiva Chettri Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Yup Vijay, Link building is the most important part of SEO. Ignoring it will be like suicide for your blog
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i don’t think google thinks very highly of reciprocal links, in my experience you can get good results by submitting articles to article directories and including your link in the bio, try and use anchor text in your link
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Mark C Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Totally agree with you,
I never actually said i Condoned Reciprocal links, in fact said in a comment earlier, that i wasn’t keen on them
Articles do seem to work well, but you will reach a stage where you need to branch off and secure some more diverse and powerful links!
Cheers!
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hmm… I am regularly following this series, keep it up, would like to more about SEO Optimization
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Shiva Chettri Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Glad to know that you are following the series. Atleast it is helping some people if not many
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This is great! Thanks for the info. I am new to SEO and I am doing several SEO process with the help of my friends. I think Google, yahoo and Bing have different algorithm. If you are the only person optimizing a website, track all the SEO process you made and check the result. From there you would know what area to focus on.
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Great follow-up post to your previous 2 posts in the series.
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Great post. Thanks
Hieu Martin´s last blog ..The Best 15 SEO Tools for Beginners
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Article submission is the must ……
and many popular site are available for it….
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What are good article submitter website’s so i can get an article spun and distributed to get a lot of valuable backlinks?
Andre´s last blog ..Geld lenen zonder bkr toetsing
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Shiva Chettri Reply:
August 6th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Well Andre there are a lot of Good article Directories out there, some f them being EzineArticles, GoArticles, Articlebase.cm You could just search google for the keyword “List of Dofollow article Directories”
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Checking competitor’s links is often overlooked and it is very important. Great information for when first getting started with SEO. Thanks for passing it along.
Charleston Marketing´s last blog ..Nofollow No Problem! Social Networking Rises Above Search Engines
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