Posts
I hate the belabor the point but I figured I could beat this horse once again so here it goes.
Linking is crucial to your online success, plain and simple. If it is not THE most important variable in determining your sites importance, it is undoubtedly the second most important. I waffle in this statement simply because there is much contention as to whether linking or content is king in the SEO world. Since I cannot bother to argue the point, I simply take the approach that both are vitally important and need equal attention.
Now I assume that most people know what linking is but I will give you a little definition just to make sure we are all on the same page.
Linking, Links or Back Links can be loosely defined as, the number of links pointing to a website. The more links pointing to your site the better and is referred to as "link popularity".
When I first started out I had no idea what was involved in building links to my two sites. I assumed that it just happened naturally or organically but boy was I mistaken. The two sites that I started with spent almost a year in a digital nowhere land, with no roads in. They were the online equivalent of a Grizzly Adams like seclusion.
One day about mid September, the next step in my link building education began with an unfortunate incident. In the blink of an eye, I was suckered into a buying a $69 a month link building subscription. The nice gentleman on the other end of the phone promised #1 page ranking and much needed back links to my site. Excited at the prospect of finally making some money online, I figured I would give it a go. Believe it or not, It actually worked! Well it kinda worked. Ten months and $690 later, I had a handful of back links and a # 1 page ranking in google just as the nice man said. The problem was you had to use a bizzare keyword combination in your search string that had nothing to do with my site to get the result. Unfortunately I didn’t really have any recourse because they did what they said they would, build links to my site and get me a #1 page rank.
After this fiasco I took control of my link building and started to look for ways to build links for myself and in this seach, I learned that there are five steadfast ways to do this which guarantee results and won’t cost a fortune if anything at all.
- Directory submissions
- Linking partnerships
- RSS link feeds
- Blogging or article submissions
- Forum signatures
Directory Submissions can be a huge task and takes up a monstrous amount of time especially if you are submitting your site to a directory at a time. You can pay someone to do this for you but there is no guarantee of the quality of your submissions and it usually cost some serious money. There are also a number of tools out there, some good some bad that will automate the process and make things move along much quicker. This is the route I would suggest.
DigiXmas is the tool I use is and it is GREAT!!! It provides you with an automated submission system but with the quality you get from manually submitting your stie. As I said in the introduction, building links to your website is the single most important thing a webmaster can do to ensure success online and the way many webmasters bolster their link count is by submitting the websites to directories. This little program is hands down the best program I have ever come across for directory submissions. The free version gives you access to 250 directories, in order to get access to all 1600+ directories you have to buy credits for each site you are submitting but it is well worth it. You can also import your own list of directories to submit to which helps keeping costs down.
Linking Partnerships are simple. Find a site that you like and has similar types of products and or theme as your site and simply ask if they would consider linking to your site in exchange for the same consideration from you.
This a really simple way of building links. You have to have a links page somewhere on your site to place these links but it can be worth the effort. You can also offer to pay someone to put a link to your site on their home page in lieu of a reciprocal link. This is great in that your link is front and center and it is a one way link but then it gets into forking out money you may not have.
RSS Link Feeds are a great way to build links to your site but there is some contention as to whether this is a good practice or bad. I use them with good results and have no hesitation in recommending their use but if you have some concerns, by all means do a bit of research on them.
What RSS link feeds are is simply a link page which is set up to accept link partners automatically through a third party. You set the category of webpage you will accept as a link partner and you are off the races. You usually have to login to the third party to accept or reject the link requests but it only takes a minute or two.
The two I have used in the past are.
My own personal RSS link exchange program is
Blogging or article submissions is simply writing an article on a topic which is directly or loosely related to your site and making it public for the entire world to see. This creates back links to your site because in the text of your article or in your author bio you have a link to your site. If people start to use your blog ot article on their site there is a link trail back to your site. Good quality articles and blogs and not shameless promotion is what most people are looking for.
If you blog you should use a blogging platform that is not a part of the site you are promoting. There are a ton of free blogging platforms out there just do a keyword search for free blogging. You can even use the blogging platform in Auto Responder University it will do the trick.
As for article writing, I personally use Ezine Articles. They have a great reputation and reach thousands of readers and webmasters.You can also do press releases through them and other excellent content bilding features.
Forum Signatures is a great way to build back links and it is virtually painless, especially if you are a Forum Junky. You get a free back link every time you post in your favourite forum. These are not what you would consider high quality back links but every link counts and if you participate in a forum with a high page rank, your site will be associated with a quality site.
Just go into your control panel in your favrouite forum and place your website link in the box provided. They will usually give instructions on how to do this.
As you can see there are a multitude of ways to build links to your site and it can be done without breaking the bank. I highly recommend each of the resources above and the best part is that they are all free to use.
Remember linking is important so make it a part of daily SEO activities.
Check your link popularity HERE
