Introduction
I have been looking for the best link building methods out there, and I am prepared to say that none of the pros gives you any useful tip. What I came to know from my experience is that the pro bloggers know far more than ordinary bloggers do, and they won’t share their hardcore secrets with you at all.
Most of them parrot the old-style methods, which you have tried yourself, and nothing new. They include social media submissions, article submissions, link exchange, one-way link building through three way link exchange, DoFollow blog comments, etc. Nothing new.
Trust me, link exchange is going to help you much. It’s already been deemed worthless. Google seems to devalue the blogs participating in this. Three way linking is the best method to get links, as of now. This way, you can get some great one-way links.
Social media submissions and article submissions are helpful in getting links, though they are not going to give you high traffic value. You have no idea how many million articles are submitted every day, in those thousands of article directories out there, by people and mostly by automated software
for article submission. None or most of these article pages rises in PageRank or even is placed high by search engines on SERPs, and thus they can’t give you any big advantage. Social media submission is also getting less and less in terms of value.
Here, I have some great newer ways to build links for your blogs.
1. Copyrighted Picture Albums
What do most people do when they have some great new photographs? They may submit them to Flickr to build their Flickr profile or to ShutterStock and get them sold. Do you know, you can use these photographs to build some links? Store all your copyrighted pictures on your own blog or website and tell people that they are copyright protected and need a link back to the site for placing them in their blogs. This is a viral method, since people visiting these blogs should see your link and come back to your site to use those photos.
Make sure you keep track of your pictures. If you find any unauthorized use (plagiarism), you can approach the person and tell him to properly link to your site. Create an album of these photographs. You can also submit your wallpapers to wall paper submission sites for free links from those profiles.
2. Video and Podcast Albums
What do people do normally when they have videos? They submit their videos to YouTube and make no money whatever. Of course, it is intelligent to build a YouTube profile, but why not create an album of your private cool videos within your site and ask people to link to the site for using the videos? Just like picture albums, you can create a video album and get many link backs.
Similar to videos, you can create podcasts and give them away to people who want it for link back.
3. Add a Directory to Your Blog
Tell the world that you have a directory of specific blogs (perhaps blogs in your niche, or blogs of a particular geography). See what Amit Agarwal has done. You can make all the links from the directory NoFollow, no problem. Design some cool banners like how Amit has done and place them with embed code, or give the code to directly link. Tell the bloggers that they are part of a group of specific bloggers.
4. Design WordPress and Blogger Templates and Give Away Free
This is one of the tips that most people already know of, but don’t explore much. You can create a number of themes yourself or make great tweaks to already existing themes. Place these themes in a gallery within your site for people to download. The themes should have a bottom line of “Design by <your link>” or “Tweaking by <your link>”. This way, you are sure to get some great links.
Alternatively, you can submit your designs to websites dedicated to template downloads. You can attract more people to your templates by making them W3C Valid or Adsense enabled. You can advertise saying that the themes are special and yet free. Such themes get more downloads. Here are some sites where you can submit designs:
eBlogTemplates
FreeCSS
TemplateHunter
There are theme design sites, which look for blogs to act as their demos. If you have a great design template taken from one of their design, offer to be a demo blog for the design. This will get you a free one-way link.
5. Create Widget for Your Blog
Yes, you can create widgets from your blog’s feed. Go and sign up in WidgetBox. These widgets are a great way to get traffic and exposure to your blog, if not direct links. These widgets are placed in the Widgetbox gallery for people to install. Once they install the widget, they will be able to see your posts directly on their blogs. This way, your blog will virally reach out to many people.
Here is the article on book promotion on Facebook, which explains this further.
6. Set Up Blogs Free for Others
You can create blogs for those inexperienced bloggers out there free on platforms like WordPress and Blogspot. Just create the blogs, place a great design with your link at the bottom “Blog creation by <your link>” and you are done. The amateur blogger will continue to write and promote and your link will remain. Make sure, however, that the topic is not p0rn0graphy or any such hateful or violent one.
7. Create Squidoo Lenses
You can set up Squidoo Lenses for others free. Tell people that you provide service to set up professional Squidoo Lenses, which they can write on. Create Lenses according to the preferences of the user and promote it for some days on your blog before releasing it to the person. Don’t forget to place your footer link as “Lens Creation by <your link>”.
8. Stylesheet and Design Submission
If you have a great cool design for your blog, you can submit it to Stylesheet directories such as CSSVault. If they accept your submission, you can get a link to your blog or website. Usually these design gallery pages rise very high in PageRank, which means you will get a million dollar link. However, they accept only really cool designs.
Here are some sites to which you can submit your design:
CSSVault
CSSBeauty
CSSDrive
CSSGalleryList
ValidWebDesigns
CSSDesignYorkShire
SubmitCSS
9. Why not Create a Gallery Yourself?
Just as the Stylesheet galleries above, create a gallery yourself and accept submissions. Tell people it’s optional to link to the gallery, with a link code. Make sure you link out to great designs only and promote the gallery page well. Make it a privilege to be accepted by you. Create some logos or badges for accepted designs to show.
10. Create a Certification Program
Thanks to CourtneyTuttle.com for this tip. This is a great way to build backlinks. Rate a number of blogs in any particular area and create banners for the winners to display. Rate a really good, high PR site as the winner, and you will have a great banner ad from that site—a high PR link for you. Don’t forget to mention your winners in your site with link out to them.
The same technique applies to contests. You can hold contests and give out badges for winners to display.
Conclusion
Creating links cannot be underestimated at all in SEO. I believe that in each art, you have a million different ways to do it. So, there must be more ways to build links. For sure, I will post some dirty ways to build links and will give away some tips on that as well. I will also use some of these dirty ways to build links myself. Watch out for me!
Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008
I have been looking for the best link building methods out there, and I am prepared to say that none of the pros gives you any useful tip. What I came to know from my experience is that the pro bloggers know far more than ordinary bloggers do, and they won’t share their hardcore secrets with you at all.
Most of them parrot the old-style methods, which you have tried yourself, and nothing new. They include social media submissions, article submissions, link exchange, one-way link building through three way link exchange, DoFollow blog comments, etc. Nothing new.
Trust me, link exchange is going to help you much. It’s already been deemed worthless. Google seems to devalue the blogs participating in this. Three way linking is the best method to get links, as of now. This way, you can get some great one-way links.
Social media submissions and article submissions are helpful in getting links, though they are not going to give you high traffic value. You have no idea how many million articles are submitted every day, in those thousands of article directories out there, by people and mostly by automated software
for article submission. None or most of these article pages rises in PageRank or even is placed high by search engines on SERPs, and thus they can’t give you any big advantage. Social media submission is also getting less and less in terms of value. Here, I have some great newer ways to build links for your blogs.
1. Copyrighted Picture Albums
What do most people do when they have some great new photographs? They may submit them to Flickr to build their Flickr profile or to ShutterStock and get them sold. Do you know, you can use these photographs to build some links? Store all your copyrighted pictures on your own blog or website and tell people that they are copyright protected and need a link back to the site for placing them in their blogs. This is a viral method, since people visiting these blogs should see your link and come back to your site to use those photos.
Make sure you keep track of your pictures. If you find any unauthorized use (plagiarism), you can approach the person and tell him to properly link to your site. Create an album of these photographs. You can also submit your wallpapers to wall paper submission sites for free links from those profiles.
2. Video and Podcast Albums
What do people do normally when they have videos? They submit their videos to YouTube and make no money whatever. Of course, it is intelligent to build a YouTube profile, but why not create an album of your private cool videos within your site and ask people to link to the site for using the videos? Just like picture albums, you can create a video album and get many link backs.
Similar to videos, you can create podcasts and give them away to people who want it for link back.
3. Add a Directory to Your Blog
Tell the world that you have a directory of specific blogs (perhaps blogs in your niche, or blogs of a particular geography). See what Amit Agarwal has done. You can make all the links from the directory NoFollow, no problem. Design some cool banners like how Amit has done and place them with embed code, or give the code to directly link. Tell the bloggers that they are part of a group of specific bloggers.
4. Design WordPress and Blogger Templates and Give Away Free
This is one of the tips that most people already know of, but don’t explore much. You can create a number of themes yourself or make great tweaks to already existing themes. Place these themes in a gallery within your site for people to download. The themes should have a bottom line of “Design by <your link>” or “Tweaking by <your link>”. This way, you are sure to get some great links.
Alternatively, you can submit your designs to websites dedicated to template downloads. You can attract more people to your templates by making them W3C Valid or Adsense enabled. You can advertise saying that the themes are special and yet free. Such themes get more downloads. Here are some sites where you can submit designs:
eBlogTemplates
FreeCSS
TemplateHunter
There are theme design sites, which look for blogs to act as their demos. If you have a great design template taken from one of their design, offer to be a demo blog for the design. This will get you a free one-way link.
5. Create Widget for Your Blog
Yes, you can create widgets from your blog’s feed. Go and sign up in WidgetBox. These widgets are a great way to get traffic and exposure to your blog, if not direct links. These widgets are placed in the Widgetbox gallery for people to install. Once they install the widget, they will be able to see your posts directly on their blogs. This way, your blog will virally reach out to many people.
Here is the article on book promotion on Facebook, which explains this further.
6. Set Up Blogs Free for Others
You can create blogs for those inexperienced bloggers out there free on platforms like WordPress and Blogspot. Just create the blogs, place a great design with your link at the bottom “Blog creation by <your link>” and you are done. The amateur blogger will continue to write and promote and your link will remain. Make sure, however, that the topic is not p0rn0graphy or any such hateful or violent one.
7. Create Squidoo Lenses
You can set up Squidoo Lenses for others free. Tell people that you provide service to set up professional Squidoo Lenses, which they can write on. Create Lenses according to the preferences of the user and promote it for some days on your blog before releasing it to the person. Don’t forget to place your footer link as “Lens Creation by <your link>”.
8. Stylesheet and Design Submission
If you have a great cool design for your blog, you can submit it to Stylesheet directories such as CSSVault. If they accept your submission, you can get a link to your blog or website. Usually these design gallery pages rise very high in PageRank, which means you will get a million dollar link. However, they accept only really cool designs.
Here are some sites to which you can submit your design:
CSSVault
CSSBeauty
CSSDrive
CSSGalleryList
ValidWebDesigns
CSSDesignYorkShire
SubmitCSS
9. Why not Create a Gallery Yourself?
Just as the Stylesheet galleries above, create a gallery yourself and accept submissions. Tell people it’s optional to link to the gallery, with a link code. Make sure you link out to great designs only and promote the gallery page well. Make it a privilege to be accepted by you. Create some logos or badges for accepted designs to show.
10. Create a Certification Program
Thanks to CourtneyTuttle.com for this tip. This is a great way to build backlinks. Rate a number of blogs in any particular area and create banners for the winners to display. Rate a really good, high PR site as the winner, and you will have a great banner ad from that site—a high PR link for you. Don’t forget to mention your winners in your site with link out to them.
The same technique applies to contests. You can hold contests and give out badges for winners to display.
Conclusion
Creating links cannot be underestimated at all in SEO. I believe that in each art, you have a million different ways to do it. So, there must be more ways to build links. For sure, I will post some dirty ways to build links and will give away some tips on that as well. I will also use some of these dirty ways to build links myself. Watch out for me!
Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008
Isn't this always the case... those who know the secrets don't really divulge them. I like your list. While some of the items are typical and basic, some will be new to your readers. I am thinking of giving the create a squidoo page for others a try.
ReplyDeleteHi thanks for the comment. Much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteWhat great suggestions! Thanks for all the thoughtful insights.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jen, for the comment
ReplyDeleteThanks who ever you are for the great tips.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely fantastic post. Deserves a lot of promotion. I stumbled it.
ReplyDeleteKeep it up GJ!
Cheers.
Some very interesting and useful tips you have mentioned in this post . Regarding the dirty methods ( Black HAT ) I will advise you not to follow any since they are most like to get a site banned from search engines . So it is better to be safe rather than sorry .
ReplyDeleteYou have a really nice blog . I will visit again :)
Thanks Malathy.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kashif.
Kashif, thanks for your concern. However, I am quite aware of the blackhat techniques and don't intend to work on any of them. What I mean by EVIL is quite different in fact. I will post a separate post on those methods as well. Keep yourself posted.
Gayatri
That Good Idea for make BL.
ReplyDeleteI will try it.
thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteGreat article.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of the banner competition
thanks for nice article.
ReplyDeletegood to know you liked it.
ReplyDeleteDesigning Wordpress templates is a good one.
ReplyDeleteYou can even outsource to India, get a template designed and coded for under $400.
It's gotta be good though - there are thousands of free templates out there, and if yours is no good, you could end up paying hundreds and get no links at all out of it
Thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteThere are some new ideas out here that I'd hadn't heard or read of before...it's a good thing that you're really sharing all this info...of course, it's another thing to put all these into practice, most of these are not so easy to implement....but that's also good in a way, it won't encourage spammers ;)
ReplyDelete