5 New School Link Building Techniques
As search engines evolve, so does the field of search engine optimization. For an example, let’s look at search engine submission. Although there was a point in time when this practice served a purpose, everyone who has a basic understanding of SEO realizes that search engine submission is no longer necessary. While there are still scummy “SEO companies” who take money from their clients for performing this service, no reputable SEO would dream of charging for this service.
Another area of SEO that is changing is link building. While there are still old school methods of link building (for example, link requests) that work well when performed properly, as the Internet becomes a more social environment, there are new opportunities to build links. So, let’s take a look at five of these “New School” link building techniques:
Link Out to Others: Forget link exchanges in the sidebar of your blog. Instead, the next time you are writing a post, link out to a post from another blogger. By doing this on a regular basis, other bloggers will notice you sending traffic their way, take an interest in your blog, and more often than not, eventually link back to you.
Write About Hot Topics: Although you don’t have to try to keep up with the news blogs in your industry, you may be surprised at how easy it is to gain links by following the hot topics in your industry (which is easy to do with tools like a feed reader, Twitter and Google Trends) and writing a relatively timely post on them. Remember, even if you don’t break the news, you can get people’s attention (and links) by writing a more detailed post than the bloggers who are simply breaking the news.
Even if this technique does not always generate a ton of new links, it is definitely an effective way to generate a flood of traffic.
Give Yourself a Makeover: There are several ways a redesign can help you gain more links. First, if you have your blog redesigned by a professional, they will most likely link to you from their portfolio. Secondly, if they are a popular enough designer, you can receive links from design blogs and other design enthusiasts. Finally, if you have a base of regular readers, chances are they will link to you to notify others of your brand new look.
Best of all, just like the technique above, you can count on a great redesign to generate a lot of traffic.
Help Others: As you are reading blogs and participating in forums, if you notice someone has a problem that you know how to fix, fix it for them! Write a post that provides the solution to their problem, and then let them know about it. People are almost always more than happy to link to you when you help them solve a challenging problem.
Not only is this technique a solid way to obtain new links, but it is also great at making it easy to come up with new blog posts.
Use PPC: Yes, I just suggested using PPC to build links. Before you hit the back button on your browser, hear me out. The reason that authority sites like Wikipedia continue to gain so many links is because when someone is writing a blog post or piece of website content and decides to do a little research, they will Google their topic, choose one of the top results to read and then link back to that result from their content. Therefore, even if you aren’t in an organic authority position, you can put yourself in the same field of vision by using PPC.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:57 am
These are all some really good pointers here. I totally agree that SEO is becoming increasingly social these days. While organic results and PPC are great the social aspect has the ability to attract and engage a special kind of website traffic. I particularly like the last idea of using PPC to generate links. This is a new and great idea for me!
October 16th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
@Gerald: Glad you liked #5. It’s unconventional, but that’s exactly why it can work so well!
October 16th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Linking out to others is really a good idea. So many people are stingy with their links, but they fail to realize that sometimes you have to give if you want to receive.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
thanks for the tips.
I never thought about the linking out idea before.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
@Bode: You’re welcome. If you try this out for yourself, it won’t take you long to see that it’s a great way to establish quality relationships with other bloggers.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:03 am
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November 14th, 2008 at 12:08 am
[...] of me to make a statement such as “linkbuilding is dead,” we can all agree that the field of SEO is evolving, and as a result of the evolution of this field, individuals and companies who are involved in the [...]