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50 Link Building Tips to Promote Your Site
By Mike Collins | March 31, 2008
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Whether you just launched a new site or already have an established blog with hundreds of posts, you should always be on the lookout for new links. Backlinks increase your Google PageRank, bring new visitors to your site, and (hopefully) increase your revenue.
But link building can be a frustrating experience for even the most seasoned marketer. It takes a lot of time and hard work, which is why so many bloggers and website owners do a half-ass job and never see the benefits of a well-constructed link building campaign.
My goal in this post is to create a definitive list of link building strategies. I’ll come back to update it from time to time so make sure to bookmark it so you can use it as a reference.
Note - In this article I’m not concerned about PageRank or Nofollow tags. People obsess too much over this stuff. Nofollow links can still bring paying customers to your site…remember that.
50 Link Building Strategies
1. Give your readers unique, top quality content that they’ll find useful and you’ll get plenty of links without having to do a thing.
2. Be controversial. Take a stand on an issue and you’ll get links from those who agree AND disagree with you.
3. Be the first to comment on hot topics. Keep an eye on news channels and you can scoop other bloggers. The first to post on a topic is often linked to by other bloggers.
4. Include cool tools on your site (like a loan calculator) that people can use and link to.
5. Give away freebies. Create a free “Special Report” on your niche and let readers download it. Let bloggers in your niche know about the freebie so they can let their readers know.
6. Allow others to reprint your site’s content as long as they provide a backlink.
7. Trade content with another blogger. He writes an article for you and you write one for him.
8. Become a “guest blogger” and provide content for another blog in exchange for links back to your site.
9. Simply ask visitors to link back to you. You’d be surprised how often that works.
10. Make it easy for others to link to you by creating a “Link to Us” page. Give them the html code so all they have to do is paste it to their site.
11. Issue a press release using a service like PRWeb.
12. Exchange links with related sites. Reciprocal linking is still useful.
13. Create a simple program (such as a quote generator) and submit it to various directories like Tucows and Download.com
14. If you have coding skills, design a wordpress theme with your link at the bottom. Everyone who uses your theme will be linking back to you.
15. Not a coder? You can sponsor a theme and still get a link back…Michel Fortin sponsored the theme I’m using, you can see his link in the footer. You can work either directly with a coder or bid on a theme at the DigitalPoint Forums. Expect to pay anywhere from $25 to $100 to be a sponsor. The nicer themes go for more but usually result in more links.
16. You can buy other links at DigitalPoint too. Blogroll links, text links, blog posts, etc. Keep in mind that Google is not a fan of sites that sell links. It would be a shame if you bought an expensive PR6 link only to have it drop to PR0 with the next PR update.
17. Classified ads on Craigslist, USFreeads, etc.
18. Take out a solo ad in a popular ezine. Many ezines archive their newsletters and you’ll receive a permanent link.
19. Use Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites…add your site to services like Digg, Furl, Fark, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Del.icio.us.
20. Make it easy for other to do the same. Include bookmarklets at the end of each post to encourage readers to pass your link along.
21. Directory submissions are not as powerful as they once were, but they still influence PR and will give you a trickle of visitors too.
22. If you have more than one site, give yourself a free link.
23. Start a free Blogger blog and link back to your main site.
24. Do the same with Squidoo lenses. Use them to drive traffic to your site.
25. Add your link to your signature file in forums you visit.
26. Post useful comments or questions on other’s blog posts. Don’t spam!
27. Be generous linking to other blogs, they may notice and give you a free plug. Also, your post may appear as a trackback in their blog comments where their readers will see it.
28. Provide useful answers to questions posted on Yahoo Answers. You can leave a link to your site as a reference, but don’t spam.
29. Join or start a Google group focused on your niche.
30. If your site isn’t overly commercial, you can post a link on Wikipedia. There’s a good chance it will be quickly deleted though.
31. Look for companies that have an “In the news” page on their site. If you post an article about them and let them know, there’s a good chance they’ll add your article as a news item.
32. Submit testimonials for products you find useful in exchange for a backlink.
33. Sponsor a contest.
34. Review products on Amazon and include a link back to your site. This works especially well if you write a short, well-written review on Amazon and then mention that you have a more in-depth review posted on your own site.
35. Write a short ebook to give away and post it on various “free ebook” sites.
36. Take out an ad in your online yellow pages.
37. Join your local Chamber of Commerce and get a free link on their website.
38. Do the same with your local Better Business Bureau chapter.
39. Join other local business communities and organizations and you can get a link in their directories too.
40. Ask businesses and contacts that you work with offline to give you a link on their site.
41. Donate money to a local school and you’ll often get a link on a page listing donations. These EDU links can be very powerful.
42. Pay a professional link builder (very expensive).
43. Buy older sites that are indexed with traffic and pagerank and link back to your site.
44. Purchase expired domains and link to your main site.
45. Buy misspelled domains and domains with and without dashes. If your site is YourDomain.com, you should also register YouDomain.com and Your-Domain.com and point them back to your site.
46. Find old sites that aren’t updated but are still indexed and sign their guestbooks.
47. Automate link building with a service like 3waylinks. I do have some doubts about their long term effectiveness as search engine algorithms change, but in the short term their effects are often amazing.
48. Start an affiliate program. You can quickly have hundreds of affiliates sending thousands of visitors your way.
49. Add your link to your eBay profile page. Whenever someone views your profile they’ll see your link.
50. Last, but certainly not least, article marketing is still one of the most powerful methods for building both traffic and links. Submissions to article directories can be republished time and time again. Each time one of your articles is published you get another link.
OOPS! Make it 51…the last one got deleted when I copied over from Notepad.
51. Get a free link at Aboutus.org. Just visit their page, enter your domain, and click “Find”. It will automatically generate a page about your site. The basic page pulls info from sources like WHOIS and Alexa, but you can add your own comments and information too.
This is a free link that takes just seconds to get. Then all you have to do is post a link to it somewhere so it gets indexed.
Here’s one I created for this blog…its pretty boring but I can always add more details if I want to…
http://www.aboutus.org/MikeCollinsMarketing.com
Topics: Link-Building, Promotion |
April 1st, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Fantastic post! I’m working on my first website now, I’m gonna print this out and keep it right next to my desk for reference. Thanks so much!
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:36 pm
That’s quite an exhaustive list you have there. #51 was a surprise, so I went and added a couple of my sites. I believe I’ve bought PLR material from you which I really liked, and, as you know, most of what’s out there is crap, so it was nice to read something really good. Thanks for that and for this post.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:56 am
@Shari, thanks for the compliment and I’m glad you were happy with the PLR articles you bought. It’s always great to hear positive feedback.
April 4th, 2008 at 8:17 am
This entire list is really cool! If you intend to build an authority site, all these resources are great. I like the part about link baits.
April 4th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Stumbled. Well done Mike.
By the way, the SU link in your post footer seems broken. Maybe it’s just me.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Easton, thanks for the heads up on the broken link. I’ll doublecheck it.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Excellent post. There are many ways to increase your web presence. Reciprocal linking can be good, but only do it if you can trust the source. If their website enters a bad neighborhood, then you can in trouble as well.
April 25th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
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May 13th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
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