7 Unconventional Ways to Build Backlinks
Typical link building strategies focus on article marketing, link exchanges, and guest blog posts. These are still effective, but also very limiting. If you are only focusing on the age old link building tactics, then you are missing many other opportunities that could prove much more valuable to your website. Here are some unconventional ways to build backlinks.
Go Local
If you have a local business, then you want to capitalize on local traffic and backlinks. Contact other local businesses and ask if they would put a link on their website to yours. You can also check with local libraries, the chamber of commerce, and community websites for local link building opportunities.
Compete with Your Competitors
Is there a website ranking higher than yours? Check their backlinks and work to get backlinks at the same websites. If it’s working for them, it should work for your site as well. OpenSiteExplorer.org offers free backlink checks or you can use the backlink checker your keyword service uses.
Target Social Links
Many sites are moving away from their dependence on search engine traffic and with good reason. A significant percentage of internet visitors now use social links to find websites of interest. Write a lot of content that is interesting and beneficial to people and they will naturally click your social link buttons. Use high quality and interesting pictures as these tend to attract Pinterest traffic. Also, experiment with the placement of social media buttons on your website. Bring the most used ones, usually Facebook, Pinterest, and/or Twitter up to the top so visitors can find them easily.
Interview People
Find influential people within your niche to interview. Not only will this create interesting content that your visitors are likely to share, it will be shared by the interviewee. Send a link to the interviewee as soon as it’s on your website and the interviewee is likely to share it amongst his or her social network as well.
Review Products
Find websites that sell products related to your website and review them. Many of these sites let you add a link as a reference which you can use to link to your website.
Write Long Lists
It’s true that most internet readers do not read large chunks of information online. That’s why many posts are only 400 to 500 words. That’s about the attention span of an internet reader. However, creating a long list of resources, or best of list, with dozens of items will interest people. If they find it invaluable, they will even bookmark it, return to reread it, and share it with others.
Go Viral
Having a webpage go viral may seem just like good luck for the website owner. However you can create content with the goal of having it go viral by studying viral content you see on your Facebook page. Viral content is usually shocking, outrageous, controversial, or hilarious and it comes with a photo that catches attention. The titles are not full of keywords for Google’s attention, but rather written to grab the reader’s attention.
As with any link building, you do want to make sure the backlinks you create are relevant to your website. If you have a beauty related website, then asking a local restaurant business to link back isn’t productive. These unconventional strategies require that you narrow your backlinks to websites and content that are complementary to your own.
Author Bio:
David Kendall contributed this guest post on behalf of WhoIsHostingThis.com – visit the website for more information on their hosting reviews. David is a freelance technology writer whose articles appear on various marketing blogs.
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Kori is the editor and owner of Netchunks, a premier blog about Webmaster and Blogging Tips. She intends to make the web a friendlier place by sharing info and articles which will help other webmasters and bloggers to become successful online.Subscribe
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Twitter: tecknobuzz
says:
I Think Interviewing People works best for me as everyone likes to be interviewed
and you can write a whole article on it, plus people like to really read interviews to see who the guy is and why is he being interviewed 
Saad recently posted..Earning With Adsense
Great idea Saad!
Who wouldn’t want to post about being interviewed on their own blog. It’s just natural!
But, it’s a great way to make friends and build backlinks as part of the bargain!
Alex recently posted..Thought of the Day – Talk to More Strangers
Twitter: joeb3219
says:
I just played with OpenSiteExplorer – pretty cool tool. I’ve been looking for new ways to build backlinks ever since Google Panda/Penguin decided that all building methods were essentially blackhat. I’ve always been fond of building relationships with people, and then using mutual backlinking techniques that benefit the both of you.
Blog commenting also seems like a pretty good way. When I checked OpenSiteExplorer, blogs with DoFollow displayed a very high authority in terms of link juice. Pretty interesting.
Joe Boyle recently posted..Top 12 WordPress Plugins of 2012
Not to mention, some sites have CommentLuv, which is proving to be fascinating in terms of link building and social proof aspects. Quite handy!
Alex recently posted..Happy Thought of the Day – Planning
Twitter: webmaisterpro
says:
Absolutely, link building diversification is very important and this is the best way to stay unaffected by next update.
Carl recently posted..Is Private Label SEO for You?
As a reader, I like seeing interviews and product reviews. I think people on the internet are interested and like learning about people and things. Whenever I read interviews and product reviews, I get interested and most of the time click on some links, so I guess those strategies are effective.
Twitter: gogetfunding
says:
Another unusual one is to find expired links (that are relevant to your own website) and then kindly ask them webmaster to switch links. You’ll be adding value to the webmaster and also getting a relevant link!
Twitter: 3mwindowfilmto
says:
Great advice. People often think of articles, blog comments and directories as the primary way to get links but you’ve covered all the essentials here. I personally haven’t considered interviewing industry experts so i’ll try that and see how it goes. The rest of these i’m already doing to some extent. Thanks for sharing Shiva!
Twitter: Elena__Anne
says:
Yeah just read a good interview with an opera singer on another blog. Can be refreshing to have articles that aren’t about yourself, aren’t purely about self-promotion.
I agree. I am currently building up my social networks prescence to help boost site visits and continuously power-up my blog. Thanks
zes recently posted..Cebu Pacific Promo Fare from Aug 2012 to June 2013
Twitter: supsampust
says:
Interviewing people could be a great way to get some links.
You have provided some unconventional ways to get links, but they do work.
Samuel recently posted..Top WordPress Plugins To Reach The Top!
Also there are the new generation websites like Squidoo and Posterous where you can make interesting content and decently place the backlinks to your site. On Squidoo you place them in your profile and on Posterous also in the article body. But then again guest posting should be as serious as your own blog writing.
Twitter: techiestate
says:
Hi Shiva,
All the 7 ways you pointed to build back links are really great.Out of these interviewing powerful people seems the best but it is difficult get them at times. Going viral is a smart one but not possible always. It is purely based on what the content of your post is like. Luck combined with best efforts will definitely help. Truly an impressive post.
Best Regards,
Rajkumar Jonnala
Rajkumar Jonnala recently posted..Update Your AT&T Galaxy S3 with Parandroid Custom ROM firmware To Unlock Its Potential
Twitter: webcurd
says:
Attitude of trying new & different things help person grow in any industry .Final outcome is depend on by which way the site is getting more & low bounce rate visitors
I agree with the ways you can use to create links but at the same time you refer practically to the same ways to build links using viral marketing.
Twitter: 3mwindowfilmto
says:
These are great ways to get backlinks. I try to post long and interesting posts with many pictures because people love good content and the pictures attract Pinterest users. I love Pinning pictures from my own website and blog too because each Pin like that is a backlink to your website. Great post!
Twitter: Makewebworld
says:
Interviewing influential people can get some good backlink and instant traffic. I have tried it once and it had really fetched some good results..
Sanjeev | Makewebworld recently posted..Deal Alert : Get CommentLuv Premium with 75% Discount
I think reviewing products (either related to your blog or something that you think will interest your readers) will be a great idea to get some good backlinks. Of course, when you review products and recommend them, make sure that you have also already tried it out yourself.
Felicia recently posted..EPT Barcelona: Mikalai Pobal Defeated Ilari Sahamies Heads-Up
thanks for the post.
I like to build backlinks by social bookmarking on different websites.
Social Media presence is heavily taken into consideration by Google’s algorithms so that should be high priority.
Twitter: CrescentSkies
says:
An interesting list but I don’t really think this qualifies as “unconventional”. Most of these are well accepted and widely used (especially going viral, there isn’t an SEO wiz or online businessman on the web who isn’t trying to make that happen).
Michael recently posted..Make Money Online with E-Commerce