Chicago SEO and Web Design Guide

Link Building

Everybody wants back links. Everybody wants QUALITY back links that will generate relevant traffic and increase their rankings in the search engines. Here’s my list of 10 fool proof ways for link building that will bring results. Don’t expect a turn-key golden solution that will do everything for you. You’ll have to spend time and possibly money as well but you WILL get results doing things this way.

Yahoo! Directory – Getting listed in Yahoo! directory can give you a valuable link and additional traffic from people that are using the directory. Cost – $299 per year for commercial websites, otherwise free (inclusion not guaranteed).

Press Release- Press release, if done right, might get picked up by news websites and can greatly increase traffic and guarantee inbound links with anchor text of your choice. Cost – $200+ per release – you can use a free press release website, but to get most of it, I suggest using a paid solution, such as that of Marketwire. Be sure to get the SEO package ($75 at Marketwire). If you’re only concerned with links and online package, you don’t have to get the national distribution option, the local one submits it to all online media, difference is in TV, radio, etc.

Wordpress Template- With a little knowledge of web design and PHP (just the basics really) you can develop a theme for Wordpress.org. Your theme can be submitted to wordpress.org theme directory and include a link back to your site (both in the footer and the description of the theme. If the theme is of high quality its popularity may increase virally and secure a significant amount of back links from bloggers that choose to use it. You can submit more than one theme and update them in the future. Cost – free + designer’s work ~10-20 hrs per theme is my estimate, although that depends on how much time you want to spend on the design and development process.

Company Blog – A frequently updated blog with relevant, quality content may drive traffic to the website, score back links, and increase rankings – especially for long tail keywords. Additionally, a blog is a good venue for releasing link baits and viral content. Cost free + time to update ~1 – 1.5 hr per article.

Article Announcing – Relevant articles of high quality can be submitted to industry e-zines (www.itworld.comis a great example) and score backlinks. This is a budget version of press releases. Cost free + time to update and convince editors to include a given article on their e-zine/blog ~1.5 – 2 hrs per article (make sure to write quality content, not just a general description – offer something interesting or an industry secret).

Social Media Submission- Submitting quality content to social bookmarking websites (Digg, Technorati, Stumbleupon, etc.) can create traffic and links. This can be done both manually and by utilizing share-this type of buttons on your website and blog. Cost – free.

Directory Submission- submitting to quality industry directories, such as DMOZ, can gain you inbound links. Although this type of link building is falling out of favor, it can certainly gain you some traction when starting a new website. When submitting, try to focus on relevant, industry specific directories, and don’t use automated submission software – sure it might gain you links but of really poor quality! Cost – free, although time consuming.

Micro-Blogging – Established micro-blogs, such as twitter, can be leveraged in viral marketing campaigns to initially announce new viral content/link-baits, such as articles on the blog. Cost – free.

3-Way Link Exchanges- If you can acquire high PageRank web pages, you can use them as link resources, where other webmasters would give you a link to your website in exchange for links from your resource pages – effectively providing you with one-way inbound links. Cost – free + possible cost of acquiring the resource pages (buying existing websites, domains, or creating your won).

General Link Building- There are many general link building techniques to be used. The classical approach is to email webmasters and ask them to put up a link to your website. This is also known as “Link Begging” and is very time consuming – you might email 100 people and get one link in exchange. If you choose this path, I’d suggest offering the webmasters some incentive (something in return) to give you a link and ALWAYS write personalized emails including the webmasters name (if you can find it) – don’t just copy and paste! Believe it or not, you can always tell if a message is unique or not!

There are many other techniques, such as link buying, link exchange and a whole score of Black Hat techniques, but the ones above seem to work the best (at least in my humble opinion). Of course, they might take time and money, but they do work. Combined with good keyword research and smart on-page optimization you have all the tools to succeed at Search Engine Marketing.

Hope this helps and I don’t get dissed for giving too much away Let me know if you have questions or comments – I’ll try to address them promptly!

Thanks for taking the time to ready my thoughts on the subject!

- Konrad

Tags: Link Building, linkbuilding, links, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO