6 Ongoing Link Building Techniques You Should Be Employing

6 Ongoing Link Building Techniques You Should Be Employing

Finding effective and sustainable methods of building links to your website can prove challenging. However, with some effort or investment on your part, it is possible to enjoy an boost in direct traffic as well as a boost to your link profile and search engine rankings through an ongoing link building strategy. There are tried and tested techniques that have been used for years that help build links in volume, as well as techniques that aim to build a smaller number of links but of much higher value - the perfect combination for a natural looking and effective search engine link profile.

1 - Directory Submissions

Directory submissions should be considered a staple part of your link building campaign. While directory links provide less value than they did several years ago, they do still provide benefit. What's more, while there is a finite number of directories online the number is massive and you can submit to one or two hundred directories a month for at least the first year or so of your link building strategy.

There are location and topic specific directories as well as general category ones. There are also those that will only accept home page links and those that will take deep links to other pages of your site. Combining these and using them accordingly will help generate the best results.

2 - Article Marketing

Article marketing is another age old link building technique and while directory submissions provide finite, albeit extensive, opportunities, article marketing offers infinite possibilities. There are hundreds of article directories, including a good number that can be considered search engine friendly.

Write appealing and relevant articles, include an author bio with one or two keyword optimized links to your pages and submit them. Some marketers prefer to stick to a handful of the best directories while others opt for mass submissions to hundreds of article repositories at a time.

3 - Press Release Submissions

Press releases can provide good links and a great sense of authority for your website. Readers will be more inclined to trust a press release than they will a blog post or article, but the number of press release directories that accept HTML links, with keywords in the anchor text, is limited so you will have to look around.

Ensure that the press release is properly formatted, not written in the first person, and is not simply a thinly veiled advertisement for your website or business. Sticking to the rules and best practices of press release submission will help ensure that your release has a greater chance of being accepted by a good number of websites.

4 - Guest Posts

Blogs continue to be one of the most popular forms of website. Individuals, companies, and organizations, as well as marketers, maintain their own blogs with regular, good quality content. They also link to one another and this helps blogs to attain high rankings in relevant search engines, but it also means that blog owners have a major requirement for regular content.

Some blogs fulfill this requirement for content by opening up their blog to guest posters. Find blogs in your industry and on a topic relevant to that of your site and then determine those that actively seek guest posts. If you're building links to aid in your SEO then do ensure that the blogs you post to are search engine friendly - primarily, this means ensuring that links do not use the nofollow attribute.

5 - Link To Authority Blogs

Another great thing about blogs is the sense of community that they attract. Blogs within the same industry will regularly link to other blogs on a similar or related topic. This offers the blogger a great opportunity to essentially acquire advertising from competitor websites; something that simply doesn't happen with standard business related websites.

Link out to other blogs in your industry that carry a lot of authority and have a lot of readers. Encourage your readers to click the link and visit that site. When the blogger checks their site statistics and notices a lot of traffic all emanating from your blog then they may well provide a link back on a topic that you have covered yourself. Repeat regularly to get links from a number of the most authoritative blogs in your topic.

6 - Full Social Media Marketing

Social bookmarking, social networking, video and content sharing; these are all a part of a social media marketing (SMM) campaign. They can be very time consuming but effective SMM can generate a lot of viral interest in your blog, website, forum, or other online publication. Get involved in the networks you join in order to create a real community around your website.

Post your content to your social network profiles and encourage your readers to follow you, fan you, and bookmark you. This will help you gain even more followers and it will boost the traffic to your web pages.

Link building is an essential part of SEO and it should be considered an ongoing process if you want to enjoy the best results. Find other methods to build links and try to get links from a good variety of website types in order to enjoy the best results. The above are just a few methods of building links that you can benefit from.

About the Author: Matt Jackson is founder of Ethical Link Building, which provides a range of link building campaigns to websites and businesses. Improve your search rankings and grow traffic with press release submissions and article marketing services.

Source: SiteProNews * September 21, 2011 * Issue #1596

NASIKS Productions - SEMply The Best!
Internet Marketing

Headquartered on Long Island, New York, but virtually everywhere